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Published: April 12th 2008
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poipet
rhymes with toilet We had heard some good stories about crossing the border between Thailand and Cambodia, and our experience lived up to the expectations. Our mission was to do it in under 10 hours, and not to be the victim of any scams, of which there were many to look out for.
We set off from Khao San Road in Bangkok at 4.30 AM, voluntarily I might add, so as to get a few hours head start on the hoardes of backpackers on the tourist busses and Thais coming for the casinos on the Cambodian side that would hold us up at the border.
We had a kamikaze-taxi driver (who obviously was colour blind as never stopped at red lights) who took us to the bus station. Got there in one piece, and stood in line for a ticket for half an hour. Despite the early hour, I was soon soaked with sweat. Ahhh, the joys of being in South-East Asia at the height of the hot season. We were soon bound for the border on a relatively nice bus that had aircon much to our delight. Five hours later and we were at the border town. We stopped on the way
at two police check points where police boarded the bus and checked passports, and dragged a few illegal Cambodians off the bus. Who knows what became of them.
Then we squeezed into a tuk-tuk which took us to the border where the fun began. We were travelling with a girl who didnt have a visa, so the driver 'kindly' dropped us off at a street-side 'visa' department. Having done my reasearch I knew that this was in no way official, and that the men here were part of a well established scam that took money off tourists to go get their visas for them, whilst pocketing a lot of their money. The lies that poured out of their mouths were unreal. They tried everything to make us part with some money- 'the visa departmant over there doesn't do visas', 'we are the official visa people', blah blah blah. They even said they would charge us extra when we came back having found out that we had to get it from them. Yeah right, we stomped off and they were very angry with us.
Our early start paid off as we arrived at Thai immigration at the front of the queue instead of behind loads of tour groups. So then we went to the visa department, and got our friend her visa. She was still ripped off a little, but it was one of those situations where if you don't play ball and pay up, you don't get a visa.
We were ok thanks to our e-visa which we had arranged in advance, and I would thoroughly recommend this service, as it stops you from being ripped off by the border guard.
So we got into Cambodia eventually, then met the guy that was to ecsort us to our pre-arranged taxi which would take us to our guest house in Siem Reap. After walking past many scruffy street children, people pushing rickety old wooden carts laden with all sorts and huge casinos popular with Thai people our escort found a bus driver who took us a few minutes up the road through the hellish town of Poipet (toilet, as some call it).
There we found our friendly Cambodian driver who had driven 3 hours to come and get us, for 50 USD.
The journey from the border was quite unforgettable. The road is not paved, bar about 15 heavenly Kms. The pot holes are bigger than the cars. The road is kept in this appalling condition (which was actually good by previous years standards) by its owners- Bangkok Airways. This road is the main road to Cambodias biggest tourist attraction- Angkor Wat, but its upgrade is on permanent hold for a very good reason- so that people fly!!!!!!!
Not to be manipulated by the likes of big corporations, we quite enjoyed our adventure. The road was narrow much of the way as it is 'under construction' (not that we saw any work going on), so we were squeezing inbetween whole families travelling on mopeds, and whole communities travelling in the back of pick up trucks. Everyine was wearing face masks as the dust trails created by the vehicles were so bad- visibility was very poor at times which only added to the fun. I can only imaginbe what this route is like in the wet season- the word bog springs to mind.
After 3 hours of this hellish journey we got to Siem Reap, giving us a journey time of just under 9 hours which was not bad. After witnessing the number of Toyota Camrys bouncing up and down that road, I have decided it is definately going to be my next car as they muct be truly indestructable, given the size of the pot holes and the speed at which they went through them.
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