leaving my Cambodian homeland

Yesterday I left Siem Reap and caught the bus back to Poipet. I didn't have enough money left for a taxi, even a shared one. I really like Cambodia. Siem Reap is rather unpreposing when you first come into it, with its mud-edged streets and random ramshackle buildings (basically a poor town that has tourist dollars coming into some quarters but not others), but its a very nice town. If you judge a town by whether it has a fruit bat colony in the middle (and I do) then its a great town. I had absolutely no problems of the thievery pickpocketery kind anywhere and never felt unsafe while I was there. There were no leeches in the areas I was, and almost no biting insects at all (I got maybe five bites total, although one was a doozy and made half my hand swell up). I have to say that Cambodia is more expensive than Thailand. Perhaps its because of all the tourists who come to this particular place, but I think its more to do with the country's use of the American dollar. Everything is $1 or $2 or whatever. A meal that would cost 30 or 40 Baht (about NZ$1.50 or $2)in Bangkok costs US$2 or $3 here. A 1.5 litre bottle of water that is 10 or 15 Baht in Bangkok is US$1 here. Internet is cheaper though, 50 or 75 cents an hour (about 40 Baht in Bangkok) and burning a cd only US$1 (100 Baht in Bangkok). And as for it being the rainy season, it rained for about an hour on my first day at the temples (not hard rain, just persistant), very lightly for about ten minutes on the third day, at night on the fourth day, and quite hard in the middle of the day for about an hour yesterday. In other words, the rain was no problem at all.

I was a bit worried by the bus because I'd read lots about the scams they pull on their passengers, but I had no choice. A girl called Pin who works at the guesthouse organised the ticket. She's probably the loveliest girl in all of Siem Reap so obviously any problems I might have got from the buses weren't her fault. I asked her if it would be a mini-bus or a big bus, and she said big bus. It was supposed to arrive outside the guesthouse to pick me up at 7.30. At 8.10 a dude on a motorbike pulled up to take me to the bus station because there was apparently some problem with the bus coming to me. I said I wasn't going on a motorbike with all my gear. He said it was no problem, jump on. I said there was no way I was going on the motorbike with all my gear. He left. Ten minutes later the bus arrived, apparently having overcome the problem it had had before. I will reluctantly use a motorbike taxi if there's no choice and I've only got my one day-pack, but its only very reluctantly because you have no protective gear, no helmet, and no control of the situation. All you can do is hang on and hope that there's not a landrover coming from the opposite direction while you're overtaking the petrol-tanker on that blind corner.

So the bus arrives. Its not a big bus, its one of the little local fall-apart mini-bus jobs. I got on and we were off -- up the road and round the corner to another guesthouse where we sat for 20 minutes. No-one else got on and the only person who got off was the driver. Perhaps he was having breakfast. Then we really were off, at 8.45. Two hours later we stopped again at a restaurant, for 45 minutes. Like any normal person going on a five hour bus trip, I'd taken food with me, so while all the other dropkicks ate I stood around impatiently. I just wanted to get to the border. I was anticipating long queues in the middle of the day, and then I still had a four or five hour bus ride on the other side to Bangkok, so I wasn't happy about this. The only upside was that I got a new bird, a white wagtail, while I was standing there. Later the bus passed a sign for a sarus crane reserve and there was a big picture of a florican on the road leading off to the place. Its times like that you wish you were in your own transport and not on a bus. For some reason the ride back to Poipet yielded more birds than the ride from Poipet. The only birds the first time were a few common mynahs, while the way back got me nine species (except for the wagtail all ones I already had). Total birds for the whole Cambodian jaunt was just 27 species, 9 of them new. Also three mammals, with one being new (that's the Lyle's flying fox).

We got into Poipet at about 3.00pm. The first free bus, from the bus station to the Cambodian immigration was there but not the second between the two checkpoints. Maybe that one's just a one-way ride. There was almost no-one at the checkpoints. Perhaps I got lucky or maybe Cambodia-into-Thailand is always like that (because of the free buses bringing people in small groups). In any case, I was through Cambodian immigration in two minutes and then after walking down to the Thailand checkpoint, through there in about five minutes. No problems at all. I needed more food by then, so I headed to the same restaurant I'd eaten at when coming through the other way. It had a big aquarium with an Asian arowana in it, and stuck on the front the famous naga picture. This is ubiquitous in southeast Asia but because I don't frequent its most usual showing places (bars) this was the first time I'd seen it. The photo, so the story goes, shows a ten metre naga being held up by a row of the American soldiers who accidentally killed it while bombing the Mekong River near Vientiane in 1969. Naga are a type of giant sea-serpenty style snake that is said to inhabit the Mekong. Cryptozoologists hunt for it from time to time and the locals believe in it without question. You can find out all about it on the fabulous internet. The truth behind the photo of this particular naga (also found easily on the internet) is that it actually shows a seven metre oarfish from Coronado Beach in California being held by Navy SEALS. It was taken in 1996.

I got a tuktuk to the Aranya Prathet bus terminal. On the way I was stopped at a police checkpoint for a bag search. He only wanted to look in the black pack I had and when he saw it had binoculars and camera stuff he lost interest. The pack looks similar to what some of the police over here carry weaponry in, and I think it confuses some people. Also I don't look like a regular tourist in T-shirt and jandals, because I'm almost always in sort-of-Khaki-coloured shirt and trousers and jungle boots. Several persons in Cambodia asked if I was in the military back home (people who know me will find that very funny I'm sure). Also of course, like most military personel, I have lots of ear-rings and hair plaited to my waist.

There was a bus all ready to leave when I got to the station at 3.40, and I got into the Bangkok terminal at 8.15pm. The Thai bus felt like a race car on their smooth roads after the conditions in Cambodia. Prakorb's House had no vacancies as is usually the case when I get back into Bangkok, so I got an overpriced room at the seriously misnamed "Budget Guesthouse" until the next day when I got a room at Prakorb's. If you find a place you like keep going back there, that's how I think things should work. The next day (today) I got some money out of an ATM, went to the bank to get it changed into smaller bills (because the ATMs give it to you in 1000s, which you can't use anywhere), and the bank was closed. Apparently Bangkok decided to have a coup d'etat today (and why not? I say), and all the banks and schools and museums and places of that nature (I'm guessing anywhere with security guards) are closed. I got my train ticket for Chiang Mai today as well, so tomorrow evening I'll be away again. More travelling. I hate the travelling; I like the being there.

Item of interest (to fish people): the day before yesterday in Siem Reap I had sweet and sour fish for lunch. The fish were lacking heads and tail fins but they looked familiar. I asked if they were local fish from the lake and yes they were. I drew a picture of an Ompok and yes, that's what they were (or at least something closely related). Ompok are a type of catfish related to the glass catfish but larger and not transparent. I was eating aquarium fish. They were very yummy.

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