Advertisement
Published: March 27th 2007
I'm very excited to be here in Cambodia finally! I mean I've been waitin' since grade 5 when I did a school project on the country but at that time it was called Kampuchia. Wow that was like 15 years ago! Anyway. I didn't do the Khao San Rd (KSR) travel agent bus ride thing because reading more about them, they are total scams. So I made my own way there. I wasn't too sure of when rush hour was in Bangkok so I got up at 4:30am to catch the 6am bus from Morchit bus station. I ended up getting the 5:30am bus....even better! I took the first class bus (207B) and 4 hours later was at Aranya Prathet. Rode a moto (motorcycle) another 6km to the border where the first scam took place! Some official looking guys, with name tags and all, motioned for the moto guy to pull over by them. They were going to fill out my visa application since I didn't have one. I thought it was kinda weird that this was happening now before I wasn't even stamped out of Thailand. I asked him if him filling out the form costed anything and he
said "no" because I read there are people who will offer to fill out your visa application for a price. But here is where it gets interesting.......he asked me for 1200B for the visa! And I was like "what? I don't think so." I mean that was how much it was to get it on KSR for 1 day service. I asked why am I even filling the visa out here under a tent before I even exit the country when there is suppose to be a building after getting stamped out of Thailand. And the fee of the visa is 20USD NOT 1200B. The guys were very convincing saying that you could not get a visa at this border and that you had to do it in Bangkok and if I were to do it in Bangkok is was 20USD but here it's 1200B. "There is no place to get your visa after getting stamped out of Thailand" so they say! Bullshit man. If I hadn't read up on these little scams I probably would have bought into what they were telling me because they were damn adamant about it all. I told them that if I was wrong
about getting the visa here then obviously I will be back. The only shitty thing was that the dude took off with my filled out application form (gave back my picture). That is sketchy so I hope nothing comes of it. One scam done, 2 more to go. So I got stamped out of Thailand and headed for the "VISA service" area!! I filled out the application and here comes scam #2. The guy I gave my application to asked for 1000B and it will be done in 3 minutes or else it will take a lot longer. I said I was paying what the sign says, 20USD. He told me it will take 3 hours then although when looked around there were only like 5 other people waiting. I was like "fine", I turn away and he said "just give me 200B extra". "NO". "100B". "No thanks. I can wait". Oh man he was pissed and I figured that I would be waiting for 3 hours regardless of the actual number of people waiting; however, 45 mins later I got my Cambodia visa! While I was waiting, 2 other foreigners came by and I warned them about what to
expect. They got the same deal except a 2 hour wait not 3 hours like me. Guess he liked the dude better😉 Even after I got mine, I still waited with the couple from Australia (Andrew and Sally) because we were going to share a cab to Siem Reap. They too got their visa 45 mins later too. The wait was totally worth it just for this one cambodian dude who asked me, while we were getting on the free shuttle to immigration, was "are u from Canada?" and I was like "sure am" and he replied "top of the morning to ya"!!! Oh my god! The aussies and I laughed so hard. I thought that was just an Irish thing but apparently Canadians say it too😊 Oh man that was funny. The laughter stops there though as we head off to scam #3. We got stamped into Cambodia no problem but the taxi mafia were waiting. We were pretty surprised how tame things had been so far because reading about this border crossing has nothing good about it. But we spoke too soon because it hit when we got to the taxi depot. Scam #3: So a taxi to
Siem Reap from Poipet is suppose to be $40-45USD but of course the drivers are greedy and want more money in their pockets so they charged $60!! Split between 3 people isn't that bad but still it's the principal of it all. We tried to get the cost lowered but they wouldn't budge. This one dude was really rude and we didn't want to deal with him so we went to the other side, even though same company, to talk with another guy. The people who left before us got one receipt after paying but we got a different receipt. It seemed kinda sketchy having two different receipts if it's the same company so we were asking why the difference. And the rude guy totally went off and eventually grabbed the receipt out of Andrew hands, ripped it up, and said he is not going to service us anymore and said "do you not understand the language I'm speaking". Hahahah it was so hard not to mouth off or laugh....don't want to make matters worse and be stuck in the shithole Poipet. Anyway, the guy that we were trying to talk with wrote out another receipt (same one the other
peoples) and before we got in the cab and the nice guy apologized and said that rude guy was from Israel!! Hahahah. So we were on our way to Siem Reap on the worst rode I've ever been on. Holy crap was it bad. Rumor has it the airlines are paying the government tons of money to keep the road bad between Siem Reap and the border. 4.5 hours later we were in Siem Reap. I was still vibrating once out at of the car! Now it was time to find a guesthouse. He dropped us off at one of the guesthouses that was on my list to see. They only had a single room and I checked it out but at first glance it was alright but I wanted to check the two others out. The other was full and the last one had a room but I didn't get a good vib from the staff. So I called the first guesthouse I was at to see if the room was still available (not even an hour later) and it was not! Shitty. So I spent the night at Villa Coconut Lodge. The room was decent (hotshower, tv, 2
fans) and comfortable but it didn't have much of a social setting like Garden Village Guesthouse (first one). Plus, the free internet was not working and they advertised getting free shit which they didn't come through with (free t-shirt, scarf, breakfast). And, I found the staff very pushy. Kept asking what I was doing, when going to Angkor Wat, they will be my driver, what time I go...constantly. Even though I kept saying I did not know what I was doing tomorrow, I still got a knock on my door the next morning at 9am saying that I was suppose to meet the driver at 8am!! Oh man that was it. I was going back to Garden Village and hopefully they had a room and they did!!
Walked around Siem Reap. Went to the Old Market which I found not to be that great. It was pretty nasty in the meat section where there are no fans or anything to keep the meat cool or the flies off and the stench was horrendous. I'm not one to get grossed out very easily but that smell was pretty bad. I met a fellow Canadian at the guesthouse, Krissy from Winnipeg.
We chatted for sometime and got some cheap dins at one of the food vendors along the street ($1.12USD for noodles with veggies and mango shake). Ya. I made a friend!! She and I both have been missing the social contact😉 We planned to take a tuk-tuk to see further away temples in a couple of days. I set up with the guesthouse to see the sunrise the next morning at Angkor Wat. So they were suppose to provide me with a moto driver for the day. Well, I was out front at 5am when the guesthouse chick told me to be and no driver! Not a good start to the day. I talked with the staff and eventually they got a driver but by this time is was 5:30am and too late cause by the time I bought my pass and made it to the Temple it would be 6 and too late! So I went back to bed and went later to the temples, and I found my own damn driver! Angkor Wat was pretty cool but it wasn't the most impressive temple I saw. I liked Angkor Thom (with the carved faces into the buildings) and also
Preah Khan which was just different from the rest of the temples. Krissy and I did the sunrise the next morning and the monuments around Roluos Group which are among the earliest large stone temples built by the Khmer. They weren't as impressive as the some of the Angkor temples but were interesting just the same. We used her driver, Lin who took us back to the city through the villages and fields. It was very cool to see how Cambodians live, both city and rural. As we would pass little kids they would wave vigorously and saying "hello. hello" with such joy. It was great. I love to see how their faces light up, no animosity or anger, just pure happiness! So many of them naked, running around and playing. Love it!! Lin took us to the monastry were he lived for 10 years while going to high school. We got a look behind the scenes, where lunch was being prepared for the monks. They only eat 2 meals a day, breakfast and lunch of rice and meat. I thought monks couldn't eat meat but supposedly if the animal is killed by someone else then it is okay. They
cannot eat dinner but have only coffee or tea. Lin took us around the back to where the stupas were. Stupas are Buddists monuments, spiritual monuments that contain the ashes of family members that pass away. We crossed into the area with the Chinese tombs. We then saw the ceremonial offering of food to the monks. We took part in this daily ritual which was neat I thought. The food was blessed and we spooned out rice into each bowl of the monks.
In Battambang now to see the Killing Caves (next blog will tell all). I still have to upload more pics but taking so long. Please check out this blog in a couple of days with the rest of the pics. Until next time..............
Advertisement
Tot: 0.063s; Tpl: 0.026s; cc: 9; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0291s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Mags
non-member comment
COOOL
I likie the pics! Man, what was I thinking - roaming asia or working in fort mac.. geez!!