Day 268 - Third Class Citizens

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Up at 4:15am this morning to buy tickets in advance (same-day sales only) for the 5:55am train to the Thailand/Cambodia border. This is a ‘proper’ Asian train and only has 3rd class carriages. And a 6 hour train journey costs about 70p! The carriages aren’t even that bad - not great smelling and full of people transporting or selling mysterious foodstuffs, but probably not much different to trains back home. Whether wrinkly old ladies try and sell green beans and garlic from wicker baskets on the London-Brighton line is another matter.

We enjoyed the passing Thai countryside and reached the final Thai station a little under an hour late, and caught a tuk-tuk to the border itself. We could have bartered but couldn’t be bothered and paid 80 baht for the 5 mile trip. 50 baht would be more like it we reckon. The border was the typical manic scene of people everywhere up to all sorts of weird things, but generally moving things across the border on hand-pulled carts. Being foreigners we get whisked past the long queue at immigration, which is obviously great in a way but we didn’t necessarily want special treatment just for being white. At the Cambodian side we have to buy a $20 visa and pay the expediting fee (well, bribe) to the official to put our passports on the top of the very big pile. Moments later we are on our way and get drawn into what we suspect is a quite elaborate and smoothly run scam of sorts, which sees us given a free transfer to the bus station that we suspect is not the bus station at all but one company’s depot. Anyway we settle on sharing a taxi with a couple of Polish guys we come across for the bumpiest ride ever.

There is a rumour regarding the dreadful state of the road from the Thai border to Cambodia’s favourite tourist destination of Siem Reap (for visiting Angkor Wat). Apparently an airline bribes the government to keep it in a bad state of repair, therefore discouraging bus travel - it is seriously uncomfortable - and forcing people in Bangkok to fly. The taxi ride passes reasonably quickly but neither reading nor sleeping are possible as the car is flying around all over the place. It’s interesting to watch the rural scenes that we pass, including the strangest tractors we’ve ever seen - like lawnmower engines at the front of 3m long handlebars - and roadside stalls selling petrol out of old Coke and Fanta bottles. Eventually we arrive in Siem Reap and check-in to our hostel, the Popular Guesthouse. It seems to be a well-liked place. We spend time in a couple of travel agencies sorting out more flight tickets, and arrange exciting plans for the following day.

As a bit of an aside, today we arrived in Cambodia where they drive on the right. This may not seem terribly interesting, but a lot of people in the UK think that only in the UK do cars drive on the left. Smarter people may be able to add another couple of names, for example Australia. So it may surprise you to hear that we’ve just clocked up 12 consecutive countries where cars drive on the left: South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand. Or has being away from home for so long corrupted our views on what constitutes ‘interesting’!

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