Advertisement
Published: November 5th 2008
Monday 3rd November - We left Saigon for Cambodia on the Monday morning. Another border crossing as we left Vietnam. It was relatively pain free as the authorities took and filled in your passport for you, whilst dropping you somewhere to eat as you waited. If only all crossings could be as accomodating.
We arrived in Phnom Penh in the early evening. Paul has a few malaria tablets left and has decided to hang back in Cambodia for a few more days to see more of the country. Myself and Nance immediately went and booked a bus ticket to Bangkok for the next morning. For $22 we were to be transferred from our hotel at 6.30am the next morning, and would arrive in Bangkok at 10pm that night. It would be a long journey but once there we can head to the beaches and relax for a few weeks!! Our short time in Phnom Penh was spent mostly in an empty bar drinking. Our hotel room was very basic but it was all we needed to see us through one night.
We were picked up a little earlier than promised at 6.15am and taken to our bus. It turned
out that we were to be the only westerners on the bus and the only 2 people going all the way to Bangkok. The rest were all Cambodians travelling across the country with their families. In fact we had a family of 5 sitting on the 2 seats directly behind us. It took from 7am to 4pm to get to the border and during this time we had to endure the sound of crying babies and kids kicking the back of our chairs. We also got to watch some very poor quality films in Cambodian as well as for some unknown reason a Cambodian Karoke video. The bus took us just short of the border. From here we were given a motorbike transfer the rest of the way. It was only about a 1km ride but the roads were unmade, muddy and wet from the heavy rains and we had our huge backpacks with us. We surprising made the journey in one piece and the crossing was the easiest so far. For a westerner it's as easy as crossing from England to France, you just flash your passport and you are through.
Straight away we had a mini bus
waiting for us. It was full of Germans. The first thing i noticed that i didn't know before was that in Thailand they drive on the left. I didn't notice much else as it was dark by now. Despite getting caught in some serious rush hour traffic we were dropped in Bangkok a little after 8pm, almost 2 hours earlier than expected. We quickly booked into a nearby hotel for 2 nights, set out for some local food (Mcdonalds) then went to bed.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.086s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 8; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0428s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
