Cross the border

---

Finally we could leave Bangkok. Whilst we were over the moon to be getting out of the city again, not least as we had exhausted all reasonable movie watching options, there was a little bit of apprehension about the journey ahead. We had read that it could be a little bit of a tricky one.
Getting to the border was easy enough - a 5 hour train journey from the central train station, which was just a few minutes from our current guesthouse, albeit a journey that began at 5am.
The anticipated difficulty was to begin at the border, with scammers and pickpockets hindering jostling to empty/relieve us of our wallet before a 150km taxi ride into Siem Reap. The 150km had been reported to have taken up to 12 hours in the rainy season and the stretch of road was supposed to be one of the worlds worst, but very recent paving of large stretches of the road left us optimistic that the journey wouldn’t be too painful after all.
We managed to avoid the first border scam by purchasing e-visas in advance and progressed through immigration painlessly, meeting a lovely pair of polish architects on the way who agreed to share the cab with us. In no time we had found ourselves a cab (albeit one with what looked ominously like a bullet hole in the windscreen) and we were on our way. All the cabs in Cambodia are Toyota Camry’s - a model I have yet to see anywhere else in the world - even in Thailand where they are imported from. This means they are allright-hand drive - even though the Cambodians drive on the right. Well, they are supposed, in reality they just drive wherever they like - as long as they have hit their haorn repetedly to warn any motorbikes, pedestrians, cows, chickens or dogs that may be in their path of their imminent arrival.
The first few hundred metres of dusty, bumpy track gave mercifully way to a few kilometres of brand-spanking new tarmac, before reverting back to rough track for a further few kilometres. And so it went on for the next 3 hours. Parts of the unsurfaced road were fine. In some areas where the road were still being worked on we had to climb small mountains of churned up soil, where a helpful chap in a roller would try and ease a path for us by flattening out a section of road in front of us. Eventually the dirt tracks disappeared altogether and gave way to villages and then townscapes. Within 3 hours were were heading into Siem Reap.
The taxi dropped us outside the city at the mercy of a shoal of hungry tuk tuk drivers, claiming he couldn’t drive into the city. This is nonsense of course, as although the tuk-tuks into town are ‘free’, the tout that jumps in uninvited not only tries to convince you to go to the guesthouse of their choice (for which they will get a nice commission) but also try and sign you up with a driver for the next day.
The poor chap that chose onto our tuk-tuk was out of luck. He was a little disappointed when we told him where we wanted to go, and yes we had booked in advance (so he couldn’t try and tell us it was full.) He did try and convince us our chosen guesthouse was ‘a long way out of town’ - we just smiled and told him we knew, and that we liked peace and quiet. In reality it was a mere 15 minute walk to the centre of town. His face fell further when we lied and told him we had paid the full cost of the accommodation online in advance so definitely wouldn’t be considering going somewhere different. His bad day was complete when we disembarked and would not be convinced to agree to let him organise a driver for the next day. We explained, quite honestly that we would not need a driver the next day as we planned to do nothing - after a whole day’s travelling we were ready for a lie-in and some time to get acquainted with our new surroundings.
The red dust of the track that led to Bou Savy guest house cleared to reveal a shady courtyard, edged with palms and orchids. We were greeted with a smile by a young Khmer chap who we would later come to know as Plet and who would become our driver and our friend. As he checked us in and explained the options for tours to the temples, another member of staff bought us complimentary banana shakes. To two weary travellers that had been on the road in the heat since 5am, they were the tastiest banana shakes we had ever encountered, and they set the tone for our stay at Bou Savy, a guesthouse that if I didn’t have the photos to prove I had been there, I would think was an elaborate fantasy I’d dreamt up during our begrudging stay in our Woodland Inn prison cell.
Bou Savy is a family run guesthouse, where the kids run around in the morning and their gorgeous puppy appears periodically to bother the staff, chew the guests shoes and steal things from the kitchen. A three story, ruby red guesthouse with communal areas on each floor - including a lovely shady balcony, it encourages guests to get together and swap stories, recommendations and books.
It was here that Mal first met Chris, a 31 year old Swede with an 80’s perm, and impressive moustache - and a 21 year-old girlfriend in tow. His tales of travel and otherwise kept us entertained for hours and his 3-call-a-day devotion to his mother back home was equally touching and creepy. He told us a sorry tale of the time he went to the Czech republic and as it wasn’t yet summer in Sweden you couldn’t yet buy strawberries, so he purchased some in Prague - so his mother could make him a cake. Unfortunately his bag was lost in transit , and three weeks later when it was returned, the rotten fruit had ruined all of his clothes. He seemed more concerned about the cake that never was.
The rooms at Bou Savy were big, clean, had an effective ceiling fan, a big TV and - the ultimate luxury - a fridge. All for $9 a night - with free bottled water and breakfast thrown in - we had truly found the holy grail of guesthouses. As we sat in the restaurant area watching the football with the manager and one of the drivers the following evening, discussing the current woes befalling Spurs (the manager was inexplicably a fan, Sambo - one of the drivers who had just himself returned from a triumphant defensive performance in the local leagues, was a particular fan of Jermaine Jenas) sharing local whiskey, I realised that less than two months in, we may already have found the best guesthouse we will encounter on our travels.
Having spent a day getting our bearings and relaxing, we took a ride in the early evening to buy our 3 day tickets for the temples and to see the famous Siem Reap sunset. At least that was the idea - Plet drove us up to the entrance of the park that houses the Angkor ruins and we had our photos taken for or three day passes. Plet then informed us we were ‘climbing a mountain’ an eventuality I had not anticipated when I made my footwear choice earlier - flip flops. The mountain in question was mercifully a hill with a temple atop - but Plet took us up a shortcut. which although avoiding the elephant traffic of the long road up, was quite steep in places. I wondered how much fun this would be coming down in the semi-dark.
We reached the summit just as the sun was beginning to set, at least it, we assumed it was. It was too cloudy to see anything really and once again we have managed to miss another of the world's most beautiful sunsets.

---