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Published: April 10th 2011
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Hello again,
I realise this blog entry is coming fairly swiftly after the first but the guesthouse we are in has free internet which is nice and fast so I am currently uploading all of my pictures and have 30 mins to spare so I thought I may aswell write an update.
So we left bangkok on Friday, I didnt want to get the infamous "Khao San Road" bus to Siem Reap as it sounded a bit rubbish so opted to do what the locals do and take the public bus to the Thai-Cambodian border town of Aranyaprathet (bit of a mouthful). It was incredibly easy, we got a cab to the bus station, then hopped on the bus (5 hour journey costing 4quid). There was another personal space issue on the bus with the girl behind heather deciding to wrap her arms around heathers seat in order to sleep, very odd?! Apart from this the bus journey was straightforward, until we got to the border....
When we got to what looked like the final stop, most people got off, another westerner asked the bus driver where the border was and he said he would drive us right
to it, he infact drove us to a little car park where we were met by about 6 tuk tuks and a woman herding us into them. We were taken just past where everyone else had got off the bus and dropped at a very odd looking building. We were brought inside by some other men who told us that this was the border and we had to fill in a form. I was highly dubious about the whole thing, it was very make-shift and really didnt look like any official border building. The moment I asked about the price I knew it was a scam, they were trying to ask for 1200 baht each (24 quid to you and me). From doing some homework I knew that the border fee was infact $20 (12 quid). I told them where to go and Heather, this other guy and I all walked out and asked a westerner to point us to the border.
After various form filling and the police trying to get backhanders on top of the official visa fee (which they didnt get from me or Heather) we walked into cambodia where we were met by yet more
touts who were urging us to wait for a free bus to take us to the "official transport centre" again, through homework I had read that this place was another scam and they essentially take you to the middle of nowhere and you have no option to get an overly expensive cab to get to Siem Reap (about a 2 hour drive from the horrible border town of Poipet). I told the touts we were going to look around Poipet (there is nothing to see apart from run down casinos where the Thai's go to gamble) and was approached by a man claiming to be a taxi driver who would take us direct to our hotel in Siem Reap for $35 (the going rate for private cabs). I was still sceptical but went and had a look at his car and he had official badges in the window etc so we got in. He turned out to be a really nice guy and gave us lots of advice and took us straight to the hostel we wanted to check in at. The journey was really, really eye opening, cambodia is so much poorer than Thailand, people outside of the main
towns literally live in wooden shacks, the other thing I noticed was the flatness of the country, there are so few hills and the roads are all so straight!
So the taxi driver got us to the guesthouse I had my eye on (Golden Temple Villa) and we managed to get a room (lucky because its totally full now and I have seen so many people turned away!). The place is so nice, free welcome drink, massage, internet, wifi, pool table, beer at 40p, all for 10quid a night for a private room with aircon! You can live pretty well out here on relatively little, happy days.
So yesterday we had booked the "Sunrise"tour of Angkor Wat (if you've never heard of it, do a quick google), we were being picked up at the ungodly hour of 4:30am, we woke up at 4 and made our way down to reception, as soon as we were about to leave the heavens opened and there was a huge storm, rain like I have never seen before, it sounded exactly the same as standing at the edge of Niagra falls, mental! So the sunrise tour was off.... we went back to
sleep and when the rain stopped at 6:30 I went down to rearrange getting to the temples, the street had at least 2.5inches of water on it (in 2 hours!!) and I was fearing the worst. The guy told me to come back at 8 :30 and we could go then. I was so suprised at 8:30 to find that much of the water had already subsided so we got on our tuk tuk, driven by the friendly Mr Silo ($9 for the whole day) who took us to the temples.
We had a guided tour of Angkor Wat which was really interesting then looked around all the other temples in near by Angkor Thom, all very nice and cool to see buildings so old (around 900 years!) The only problem was the people constantly trying to sell you things between the temples, they were mainly children aged 3-8, selling anything from postcards, guidebooks, bracelets, fridge magnets, t-shirts..... slingshots?! It is so hard to say no to some of them as they keep asking and plead with you to buy things (be it all fairly cheap, everything in Cambodia seems to cost "wooon dolllllaaaaaarrr") we ended up getting some
bits and bobs but you cant buy off everyone as it will end up doubling the price of the day!
We are having a chill out today after the long day at the temples and we catch a night bus tonight to the beach town of Sihanoukville where we will pick up our Vietnamese visa and relax on the beach for a few days. From there we will go to the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh and hopefully learn a bit about the Khmer Rouge (again google it) and Pol Pot. I also hope to do a quad bike tour of the killing fields and local villages.
Speak soon,
James
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anonymous
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hey James Enjoy your time and keep safe. Catch you two later. Dilhani xx