Cambodia- border crossing

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(this is ages old about two or three weeks now)
im writing this in what is possibly the most blissful cafe i have ever beeen to. white and cream as far as the eye can see, white lilies and bamboo, soft sunlight and quiet cafe-del-mar-style jazz. im stretched out on a big white couch large enough to sleep about twenty with my own little table placed over my legs so i an write. i do not care you are supposed to slum it while travelling this is my kind of experience. surprisingly enough cambodia seems to know how to do luxury, theres a very colonial feel to it.

anyway on to the excitement, we ended up leaving ko si chang in a mad rush at 8 in the morning, had a mad rush at 8 in the morning, had a not so great coach ride to bangkok ollowed by another not so fantastic coach ride to the cambodian border. along the way the countryside became dustier and the poverty more visible.

just before the border, as the sun started to set there started to appear these big, very official lookin buildings. they all looked so industrial and strangely blank, with perfectly manicured gardens, huge green glass windows and wide open wasteland in-between. the dusk was one of the starngest i've seen, the sky was filled with storm light, the world seemed lit in an unnatural yellow and there were no long shadows or softly receeding light, it was like the day was slowly being sucked out of the scenery.

so we got to the border after dark. the coach stopped just before it and we had four different tuk tuk drivers telling us different things, that the border was closed, that it was about to close etc. so we met upw ith these girls who were on the coach and decided to brave it together. as we got off the tuk tuk we were assailed immediately by a guy tryign to 'help' us through. it was obvious he was a little shady from the start, but not obvious just how dodgy.

we rushed through the borders, beset by little kids from the start and then got to the actual visa point. the guy said it was 1000 baht each, which was overcharging im certain, there was even a sign which said 20 dollars but even the guards were in on it. the guy tried to take our forms with our passports and money over to the checkpoint but we grabbed them back. so we got through fine apart from being ripped off. on the other side however things got really sketchy. we were overwhelmed by an army of men trying us to get a taxi as the buses had finished. it was already pretty weird, just this dusty square with about a hundred people lounging around, all staring at us and a few little kids trying for our money belts, and they were asking far too much but then they insisted we pay at least half before. right,, so whats to stop them from dumping us twenty metres on and making away with our bags?

i went over to an official to ask about a shuttle bus but they dont give a fuck and meanwhile the guy who had been hustlying us earlier came up and one of the others came up and smacked him on the head with a fat buitchers knife. at this point we started walking away, lore was insisting we get to siem reap that night so persuaded us to go and look at this guys taxi (the one who got hit in the head with a butchers knife). yeah. at this point he tells us to wait five minutes, we had about ten guys following us it was pitch black and erin and the other girls joined me in inisisting we stay right there. so we walked over to a hotel, a fake-stucco asian version of fawlty towers. there was an incredibly loud karaoke bar hidden somewhere right beneath our room and a lot of ladies of extremely dubious virtue. as wqe checked in the guy who was hassling us tried to get the hotel staff to charge us extra so he could get a commission. they were nice enough to let us know, and we spent a sleepless night listening to the whine of cambodian karaoke.

the next day we got a free bus to the 'tourist lounge' and ended up in a travel agents. the poverty in poipet was arresting, it was so diferent from thailand. it was just total, abject, there was nothing but dust and shacks. we ended up in a minibus to to siem reap. at first the countryside seemed nothing but a vast flat expanse of dust, the roads were bumpy dirt tracks punctuated by pointless roadworks. after about three hours there started to be a little more vegetation and as we entered siem reap actual fully built buildings. i was worryingly relieved to see them, an aspiring foreign correspondent should thrive on backwater ruin surely?

anyway after saome more scamming by the taxi drivers we ended up in our guesthouse. and siem reap is lovely but very touristy and really quite developed.

anyway onto the next day. i was messing aroudn on the interenet earlier and this little boy kept coming up and asking me how to say words, doing his homework and then running away giggling at the pronunciation. so i havent written much about the poeple of cambodia. they laugh at you much more openly than thai people, and laugh a lot in general. there is more desperation when it comes to selling you things and i think a more open show that they are trying to get as much as possible out of you, that you are just a walking ATM. but thats not so bad, you know and they know everyone is scamming.

there are a lot of landmine victims and children begging in the streets, which we didnt see in thailand. when the children come up to you in the street you ownder if you're completely hard-hearted not to give them money every time you see them. cambodia is actually quite expensive as they use US dollars rather than their own currency, as its so fucked.
so yeah the whole of that day we spent in a little ourist ghetto, and then we went to a night bazaar made for tourists and then a restaurant just for tourists. it was quite coool though. there were crocdiles in a pit, apparently it used to be crocodile farm, and laods of different levels to sit on going right up to the ceiling of the warehouse it was in.

anyway the day after we went to the temples of angkor wat so i'll start a new entry.
love and to my parents please dont get all panicky about this entry these things happen and im alive right now so its fine. xxx

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