Border jumping...and bribes!

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Our thailand visa is burning at both ends so unfortunatly I have to leave Ko Thao and make our way back to Bangkok, the city I love and hate with equal measure if that makes any sense, and get on our way to Cambodia.

Our departure is made doubly difficult as the songran or as I can it Apocalypse waterfight is still going strong for several days on the mainland. While its great fun when you have a few beers down the neck its not quite as much fun when you have to navigate crowds of people drenching each other with a daypack across your chest and a rucksack on your back.

Thankfully, I have a pretty girlfriend who is a far more inviting target to throw water at then me. Only about one in ten people decided to soak me and the other nine were much more preoccupied with drenching blondie or smearing talcum powder on her face. By the time we reached our first destination Niamh was not only soaked through but also covered in some sort of white power the thais like to throw about on songkran.*

*Due to me not paying attention, photos of blondie covered in water described above can be found in my previous entry...

Bangkok when we got there was a different place when we got there, things were winding down from Sonkran and even the Khao San Road, a street that resembles the worlds largest open air asylum was fairly quiet, I was able to walk up and down it twice today without being asked if I would like to see someone do something rather naughty involving table tennis balls, which is surprising.

We managed to make our way out to the Thai goverment bus terminal; to arrange tickets to Thailands border with Cambodia for 200 baht a head. Going with a Ko San Road travel agent is more expensive and a nest of scams, I've droned enough about Thailands scames in previous entries so I won't bore you again but if your curious google Bangkok-Cambodia bus scams and plently of reading. The golden rule if your visiting thailand is DO NOT BOOK ANY TOUR, TRANSPORTATION OR ACCOMMODATION ON KO SAN ROAD. NO EXCEPTIONS.

The Bus dropped us at Aranya, Thailand and not knowing we were within walking distance of the border we checked into a hotel for the night, intent on crossing the most infamously dishonest and con riddled border crossing in South East Asia the following morning. The Poipet-Aranya border has a large daily market where thais and cambodians can meet for the day and trade wares, you can see who is thai and who is Cambodian immediately, despite the slight differences in dress the cambodians are noticably less well feed, dragging carts full of goods rather then the shiny 4x4's used by the thais. We find a cheap resternaut and enjoy an amazing slapup before Niamh retires to bed, I battle mosquitos and other night crawlers using my rolled up lonely planet and a less then effective can of raid, the mossies here are as large as daddy longlegs and the raid merely stuns them, causing them to spiral to the floor where I administer the coup de grace with the guidebook. I rest easy, the surviving mosquitos bit me no less then 11 times, thank god for Malaria pills.

At dawn we make our way to the border passing no less then two fake cambodian visa offices prior to the border and dozens of touts trying to reel us in. Cambodian visas are available once you clear thai immigration but before that you need to pass all the fake officials trying to sell you a visa for a 100-120% markup telling you that visa's arent available on the other side.

We get through immigration without incident and arrive in Poipet. The border town of Poipet in terms of attractiveness, is kind of like Britney Spears...after she went bonkers and cut off all her hair. Its a dirty, dodgey wreck of a town stuffed with casinos and knocking shops. gambling is illegal in Thailand and as a result the Thais have to come across the border to do any gambling.

Next stop the visa on arrival desk in cambodia, inside are about 15 Cambodian border guards in yellow uniforms watching what looks to be a really good hong kong action film on tv. Getting our visa costs 800 hundred thai baht and you also need a passport photograph for processing. neglecting to bring a photograph Cambodians officials say they have to charge us 5 dollers each to arrange a picture and then we can go on opur way. We give them the dough, they snigger and stuff it in their pockets and away we go, they don't bother taking our picture!

Finally, we get through and get ferried to the "tourist bus terminal", a special bus terminal that charges 400% inflated prices. The reason for this is that due to the amount of Cons and Scams going on the goverment gave a single company the right to sort out onward travel instead of leaving visitors at the mercy of dozens of dodgey tour companies, the idea being that the price would be fixed for everything. What actually happens is that the fares are about three times the price they should be to travel everywhere as the single company, owned by a South Korean, now can charge what they like without having to worry about competition!

In any case we manage to get on a bus and get on the road to Siem Reap. Cambodia's traffic works like a food chain moped eats bike, van eat moped, truck eats van and tank eats truck. Driving doesn't involve signals, indicating or following any sort of road rules. You simply drive at 100 miles per hour down the road while blasting your car horn, other people on the road driving anything smaller have to get out of the way or become a traffic accident statistic. Its also amazing how many objects Cambodians can put on the back of a moped, with mattresses with wheels, fruit carts with headlights and when it comes to share taxi jeeps they pile in 4 in the front, 12 in the back and whoever is left on the roof!

Next stop the temples!

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Photos

The Border!
Please present bribe money!

Pack on the gear!
Make use of your space!