Bangkok to Siem Reap via Hell

Its an early morning start 6.30 and by now we have far too much baggage and we are all a bit grumpy. Nicolas has lost his shoes, we are fighting with the hotel staff and the bus is waiting. Luckily the mini bus is comfy, air conditioned and empty. Nicky gets to sleep on a seat of his own – thank god as usually I find I’m his pillow and spend most of the trip uncomfortable while he gets to have a soft cushion and a good sleep.

It seems so quick, four hours pass and before we know it we stop for lunch and think how civilized this is. This guy comes over and says he will organize the visas just fill out the forms, they will take all the passports get our visa’s while we have lunch (cooool) There are about 4 mini busses and we are all like sheep handing out our passports. So while we are eating a plate of fried rice we start calculating what we are being charged and then 2 Canadian girls say they want their money back and they will do their own visa and heated discussions erupt. We all look at each other and know how we have been scammed big time.

I have done this border thing a few times before and hence my earnest conversation with the agent in Bangkok the day before but damn if the point didn’t come when our comfy mini bus disappears with our tickets and we are standing in the hot sun with far too many bags, waiting for a switch in operators. We are in no mans land a long stretch of tarmac to the border post. We toss our bags into a prehistoric wooden donkey cart being pulled by an equally ancient man and head for our pre-border swine flu grilling.

So now we have a smiley Cambodian in a pink shirt who attaches to us like a leach, he starts working us, we queue in a crowded sweaty office to get our passports stamped and I lose the forms so we get to the front and get bumped to the back of the queue again to redo the papers– talk about a sense of humor failure!! Nicky of course has no shoes so has to walk vast stretches in this hellhole on hot tar. Welcome to Cambodia!

Heavy bags moaning children and heat all makes a great opportunity for an excellent con artist. He starts priming us about the length of the trip from the border to Siem Riep and the bus only leaves at 4pm and stops everywhere blab blab la. Its 2 pm we would have to wait 2 hours in the sun then travel another 6 hours awww noo man.

He convinces us an air-conditioned taxi is the way to go so we hand over another 400 Baht each. (we later found out the bus left at about 3 and took 3 hours) oh yes and he conveniently walks us to the atm and describes how this is the last point to draw money (probably making sure he gets paid)

We are so aware we are being conned but are feel pretty softened up. Anyway we walk on with Nicky hopping at the heat on the road (good lesson on how NB shoes are to keep) there are casino hotels everywhere in this no mans land.

We get to the temporary bus station and get whisked out the back door past some really smelly toilets and it all feeling very surreal, we get into the taxi and say goodbye to the tosser merrily waving probably thinking – good one suckers!!

Our taxi-man takes a detour down a really bumpy track and stops at this place for GAS and I do mean gas they pop the boot with all our possesions, now I’m thinking – this is sooooooooo dodgy, so Craig hops out to see what the hell they are doing and remove the bags to fill this huge gas cylinder with well Gas, not the petrol type but the real type of gas, Huh? I thought they were filling the aircon gas for which I was grateful, anyway our driver couldn’t speak a word of English so we just left it at that.

The driver is silent but non violent and the 3 hours are pretty relaxed after the border crossing and we watch Cambodia unfold. Along the way we are a bit puzzled at these bikes roaring along with pigs balanced upside down on their backs in a basket like holder. We later find out that they get the pigs stoned with Ganga (Dagga) and because they are stoned its easy to transport the poor things to get slaughtered, shame poor pigs, my only consolation here is at least they are zoned out and probably thinking wooohooo is that what things look like upside down. Asia can really make you become vegetarian.

We were assured we would be dropped at our hotel but surprise surprise we get dropped at the tuk tuk station. The tuk tuk driver “our chosen one’ tells us that the guest house we want is no good as its full of lady boys, no good for our boys, mmm heard that one before and we say that’s were we are going OK. Guess what the name is??? GOLDEN BANANA GUEST HOUSE
Well it is full of lady boys and they are efficient, the place is gorgeous and has a fab pool yipeeee. We do a deal with our homophobic tuk tuk driver to be our driver for three days and with promises of a 9 am start we head for the pool.