Bangkok to Cambodia

---

Slaughtneil-London-New Delhi-Jaipur-Agra-Orchha-Varanasi-Lumbini-Chitwan-Pokhara-Annapurna Mountains-Kathmandu-Paro-Thimpu-Punakha-Nagarkot-Bangkok-Kanchanaburi-Siem Reap-Phnom Penh-Sihanoukville-Kep…

My arrival to South East Asia has been long awaited. I had a great time in India, Nepal and Bhutan but am now ready for a cultural change in the many countries I hope to visit here. I have no schedule but initially hope to travel from Bangkok, Thailand to Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and down through Thailand and its islands, Malaysia, Singapore and then Australia. I am currently toying with a few other countries but I’ll see how time treats me here, I have three months.

My arrival in Bangkok was shrouded in the much publicised red strikes around the city. I decided to pamper myself in a fancy hotel for my first night. I was able to share the experience with my family using skpe. I taunted them with my massive bed, bath and beautiful food from the room service, my first of some amazing food around Bangkok. I had the most popular dish here called pat thai, its fried noodles, bean sprouts, egg, ground peanut and lime topped with delicious prawns. Hmmm Hmmm. I emptied my plate quickly and hit the sack ready for my first day in Bangkok.

My first hostel was called Lub D in the Silom Road area of Bangkok. It was very good and for $8 a night I was more than happy. The humidity in Bangkok was suffocating, most of the time I was completely soaked in sweat. My first plan was to take a short walk to Asia’s largest shopping mall, called Central world to buy more appropriate clothes. I got pretty ruthless on the packing side of things before I left home and had therefore little to no clothes. My small walk eventually became quite a large one as the maps in Bangkok don’t do its size any justice. On route I came upon the red protest. It was quite overwhelming and because it was a public holiday, the numbers on the streets where in their thousands. It was quite amazing, I felt a great sense of occasion and contrary to media reports it was very peaceful. The atmosphere between the army and protesters appeared quite relaxed many shaking hands and sharing exchanges! When I eventually found CentralWorld a couple of hours later, I found that the protesters had been staging their main protest there and the shopping mall was closed. I was fairly pissed of but rather than walk back I got the sky train back to my part of town. I then headed straight to the first Irish bar I could find to experience my long awaited pint of Guinness. It was ten minutes of Irish ecstasy! Inside the Irish pub there were quite a few old men and Thai girls. It was all quite weird and dirty. It’s part of life over here but I hated it and doing there trade in a sacred Irish bar was just too much. Ha ha.

I enjoyed the sights around Bangkok for the next few days, including the Grand Palace, the Emerald Buddha, the massive Reclining Buddha and a few other things. Having seen so many temples and Wat's already, I was satisfied but not blew away. The protest escalated over the next few days and because I was waiting for my Vietnam Visa that was going to take a week, I decided to move out of Bangkok for a couple of days. I got an early train to Kanchanaburi, the location of the ‘bridge over the river Kwai’. I loved that movie and understood that it was a pivotal location during the Second World War. The three hour train journey, I enjoyed with only other westerner, a nice American girl who was hooking up with friends already at the town. The accommodation was quite basic but with a small swimming pool I was delighted as the heat was over 40degrees. My time in Kanchanaburi was quiet, to be quite honest I felt quite bored and lonely for the first time. I thought that Bangkok would have offered better opportunities to meet other backpackers than it did.

To help pass my time there I booked a day trip to Erawan National Park where there is a seven tier waterfall and then onto a train on the Death Railway where thousands of allied soldiers died as POW’s at the hands of the Japanese and finally the Bridge over the river Kwai. The hike up to the waterfalls was nice and I enjoyed swimming in the little lagoons surrounded by little fish that nibble at your feet. I stopped at each tier on my way down and at the 3rd tier I was getting ready to jump into the lagoon when I heard my name being called from behind. To my amazement and pleasure I had run into a couple of friendly Tyrone ones. I knew them through a fellow radiographer and nights around the Glenavon. Kevin and Carol Ann were travelling around SE Asia also and were able to give me loads of advice about my onward journey. I must say I was over the moon to meet people from home. We headed out that night and grabbed a bus back to Bangkok the following day, where we parted ways. Thanks to Kevin and Carol Ann I got a new lease of life ready to take on Cambodia my next point of call.

When I returned to Bangkok, it definitely had a strange feel about it. While I was in the countryside a lot of people had been killed in the protests. My initial reaction to the protest has obviously changed. However, some of the shopping centres reopened. The shopping complex of Siam Centre, Siam Paragon and Siam Discovery played host to my first experience of retail therapy. Yes I had therapy from shopping, can’t believe it! At home it’s in, out, home, in Bangkok its first floor, second floor, sixth floor building 1, 2 or 3 and finally weighed down with bags I had to choose a cinema, a movie and then locate the screen in what seemed like an airport terminal. It was a fun day and an expensive one but these things need to be done!

After collecting my Vietnam Visa, I headed straight to the bus station to catch a bus to the Thai-Cambodian border. This leg of the journey is notorious for scams and I had read up on everything I needed to equip myself with all the scam artists. On arrival at the last bus station before the border I took a Tuk Tuk to the border crossing. As expected, they brought me to a fake Visa office. I refused to pay their enhanced prices and kindly requested to leave. Pleased with myself, we continued on but this time to a Cambodian Consulate. This hadn’t been mentioned anywhere but everything looked pretty legit. When I asked about the Visa, the price was also greatly enhanced from the quoted price. I toyed with the possibility of paying but sticking to the plan of paying no more that the quoted price, I refused and directed my tuk tuk driver to the border. He wasn’t happy but I was correct in refusing and got a Visa quite easily at the border. A lot of peeved of travellers obviously got hit with a few scams but I was proud to negotiate the crossing on my own.

Cambodia obviously was a much poorer country compared to its neighbouring Thailand, but like every country in SE Asia it offered many unique difference and some great times for me! Just an hour or two across the border I ran into a couple of mad American guys Dan and Trevor and Annie another one of our newly formed gang. She too, was a crazy ass American. We instantly hit it of and because of them I enjoyed a couple of my best days to date on my trip, beginning with quite an eventful taxi trip. Traditionally one jumps into a taxi, sits back and enjoys the views, quietly reflecting on the daily lives of the locals. Nope, on this taxi trip as well as all of the above, basically we had a pub crawl; well strictly speaking they were run down road huts with generally no electricity, but with a little help from our trusty taxi driver, we managed to locate ‘Air Conditioned’ Beer (cold). At one stop Dan, Trevor and I required a quick toilet stop, as you can imagine. Behind the ditch there was a volleyball game going on. We offered to take part and spent half an hour playing volleyball as our taxi man sat a laughed at us. There wasn’t much time to learn the rules as this was my first volleyball game but I managed to play my part. We arrived at Siem Reap, the location of the famous Angkor Wat Runes, location of Tomb Raider and world heritage site, a few hours later than expected but safe and sound.

The next morning we unorthodoxly decided to hit the temples on bikes. I was cycling on a bike the size of my BMX when I was in P7. The temperature was in the high thirties Celsius and I was feeling quite dehydrated from the day before. It wasn’t comfortable by no stretch of the imagination and with just two gears working and a very low tyre I struggled to reach the runes approximately 7k away. Once there a local helped inflate the tyres on my bike but couldn’t lift the seat any higher due to the thick layers of rust. After a short tour around Angkor Wat we set off around the remaining temples, sometimes staying on the beaten track, sometimes not so beaten track. Poor Annie had a bit of a head over heels moment but quickly got back on the saddle and generally put me to shame. 35 f*~kin Kilometres later, back at the hostel I was completely wrecked, in agony actually and to say I had a sore ass would have been a major understatement. I managed to acquire the skill of cycling on one bum cheek at a time to avoid the agonising pain in the middle. Too much detail I’m sure your thinking but I think I need counselling! But after everything I don’t think I would have done it different and I managed to get some beautiful pictures in what was an amazing place the ancient runes of Angkor Wat.

Unfortunately Annie, Dan and Trevor were on different schedules and they had to leave after a few days. I wish them all the best on their travels, and thanks guys for opening my eyes to the real America again, the one I grew up loving. Siem Reap town had a lovely quiet atmosphere and we enjoyed a couple of good nights there, even sampling Kangaroo, Crocodile and Snake in one of the restaurants. There were loads more opportunities to meet more travellers in Cambodia. Also staying at our hostel was a English chap called Will. We got chatting and discovered that we had similar travel plans, so we hit the road together and took a bus to the Cambodian Capital, Phnom Penh. There wasn’t much to see in Phnom Penh, we visited the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum (S21) where the ruthless Khmer Rouge Regime transformed a local school into a centre of torture and interrogation before transferring them to the Killing fields outside Phnom Penh where thousands were executed. A monument stands there of human skulls, and mass graves are doted everywhere. An estimated 1-3 million people were executed for as trivial reasons as wearing glasses. This was a sign of intelligence and therefore suspected anti-revolutionary behaviour. We coincidently bumped into Annie again and hit the town, the highlight being given the chance to drive a Tuk Tuk. But with little else of interest we decided to leave the capital and headed to the beaches of Sihanoukville on the south coast.

We arrived late in Sihanoukville and were quickly escorted to a pretty dingy hotel. After one night of damp smelliness we changed hotel and found a great wee Australian run hotel called Coolabah Resort. It was spotlessly clean and we were able to negotiate quite a good deal there. First thing first, I needed a beach and on our doorstep was Serendipity beach. It was great sprawling out in the beautiful sunshine and the beach itself; by no means a Portstewart strand, served its purpose. The fresh fish was absolutely delicious and my favourite was barracuda! Most nights we went to the beach, had a Barracuda BBQ for $3, sat and relaxed with a couple of beers and then a few jugs at the backpacker bar. We ended up staying a little longer than expected doing very little to be honest but, requiring the rest I was more than happy. We meet another girl called Jamie, and together with Will we took a full day trip fishing, snorkelling and visiting remote islands. It was a fantastic trip on a great boat with really funny German host called Robert. I strongly recommend the trip; the company is called Sun Tours. On one of the islands we wadded through a mangrove into a jungle. As explained we held our cameras above our head, but it took a big stupid Irishman called Eoin who felt a little hot, to duck down into the water camera in hand. Curtains to my wee camera but thankfully the memory card was fine. Expensive mistake, but I think it’s a must for all travellers to break at least one camera on tour. Hopefully that’s the last one!

The next day we headed to Vietnam to cross the border at Ha Tien. Unfortunately Jamie’s VISA took all day and by the time we got to the border, it was too late to cross. We spent the night in a beautiful little town called Kep. Our intentions had been to travel to Phu Quoc an island of Vietnam. I however wasn’t feeling up to an island experience as I hoped to do that in Thailand, so I decided to part ways with Will and Jamie and got a bus to Hoi Chi Minh city. Well strictly speaking it was three buses, a boat, a lot of flaffing about and a million bridges but I’ll tell you about that when I write about Vietnam!

---