Bangkok!

Hello!!

I'm going to carry on with the trend (well... intention) of keeping my blog entries a bit shorter because I'm sooooo behind again and rushed for time as usual!

My flight to Bangkok was OK, despite a very boring wait in Kuala Lumpur and getting smacked in the jaw by a huge hard violin case! :o) Michi, who had arrived in Bangkok earlier that day, picked me up from the airport and we went back to the hotel where Michi bombarded me with all the yummy chocolate and sweets I've been missing! :o) We then went out for dinner and then went to a big tower/skyscraper (neither of us can remember what it's called) with the most beautiful posh bar on the top of it to have my post-birthday celebration! It was really lovely and the views were amazing!!

Our train to Cambodia the next day didn't leave until Midday (thank goodness.... as the cocktails were a little bit strong and Michi was also trying to recover from the jetlag!) so we just wandered around Bangkok in the morning, although didn't do much to be honest (hence the lack of photos!) as it was so hot, Michi had already done all the sightseeing there last year and I'm going back to Bangkok at the end of my trip!

The train ride to Cambodia wasn't quite what we expected.... I was (stupidly) imagining nice big comfy German trains with lots of space and maybe even air conditioning, however, the train was absolutely packed, the seats were made out of plastic and soooo close to each other that I was constantly bumping knees with old man sat opposite me and it was absolutely boiling... even with the window open it was unbearable! The journey also took a lot longer than it was supposed to, so we were very relieved when we finally arrived.... however, the relief was short-lived as our tuktuk driver kept taking detours on the way to the border so we could buy our "official" visas, which we nearly did (we had even filled in the forms) but luckily realised that something was a bit weird so got back in the tuktuk (ignoring everyone standing around who were overly keen on us filling out the visas considering the fact there was apparently nothing in it for them!) and told him to take us to the border as agreed..... we made it all of 10 meters before he stopped off at the next visa place, by which time it was perfectly obvious that he was on commission for probably every visa-scamming group in the area, so we told him to take us to the border or we were getting out! When we got to the border, it turned out that our visas were fake (big suprise!) but luckily we hadn't paid for them as we suspected something funny was going on! We finally made it across the border and took a shared taxi (which was another nightmare - we had about 20 people fighting over us and collecting comission from others) to Sisophon, as we were too tired to go all the way to Siem Reap! That evening we had a little BBQ thing (we had no idea what we were doing and they couldn't speak English) in a local street cafe and then had an early night!

xxxxxxx

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