Daniel, Peter and I got up early for what we knew would be a long day of vacation. Peter, originally only planning on being in Thailand for a short bit before heading back to the States, ended up deciding he couldn’t miss out on Angkor Wat, so he switched his flight and would stick with us for a few days. Sean and Sarah headed south to get some serious beach action.
Our day consisted of the following: tuk-tuk to the pier, ferry back to the mainland, tuk-tuk to Trat, bus from Trat to Chanthaburi, lunch and some waiting in Chanthaburi, bus to Sa Kaew, bus to Aranya Prathet, tuk-tuk to the border (with the obligatory stop at a fake consulate/visa center…we got out of there very quickly, keenly aware that it was a scam), cros
sed the quite porous border to Cambodia on foot, took a private taxi to Siem Riep(after some really sketchy and high pressure negotiations-including one police officer that seemed intent on walking away with Peter’s suitcase). We got on the first tuk-tuk at 08:30 and arrived at a random street corner in Siem Riep at 22:45.
As I alluded to before, the Thai-Cambodian border wasn’t exactly what one might expect from an international border. It was pretty active at 20:00, considering that was when it closed. After going out of the well-guarded and organized Thai exit center, we walked for quite a long way before getting to the Cambodian entrance center. It included a walk across a bridge that covered not water, but trash. On each side of the road were huge casinos. As gambling is illegal in Thailand, and these casinos were conveniently located before the entry point for Cambodia, it was clear to me they serve Thai gamblers, yet allow the border officials to save on a lot of stamps and forms. The border also provided my first image of Cambodia (naturally, I know) that was a pretty poor impression. There were numerous barefoot kids running around, begging or kicking cans (literally), the moto-taxi drivers as well as private taxi drivers were relentless, the ground was covered in litter, there was a big traffic circle that featured a half demolished statue in the middle of it, as well as plenty of casino and hotel vans milling about. In contrast, the casino inter-border area was pretty nice, as the casinos were well kept, and nobody hassled us.
Our taxi ride was pretty eventless, which was great, as we got into a taxi with a guy that had communicated to us nothing more than the name of the city and typing 35 into his cell phone-to represent $35, the cost of the ride. We stopped once, went to the bathroom-I mean hole in the corner of the gas station. After getting dropped off at a seemingly innocuous corner, we grabbed a hotel, and had dinner at an outdoor café down the road (child sized picnic tables in a parking lot-I don’t want café to make Cambodia sound romantic). We paid for dinner in Thai baht, then went to get money out of the ATMs, and were a bit surprised to find US dollars coming out when using our Chinese bankcards. When we stopped by the convenience store on the way back, it became clear that the US dollar is the de facto currency of Cambodia-a fact that the book alluded to, but didn’t make too clear. The Cambodian riel is really just used for change to US dollars, as I guess messing with quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies is too much of a hassle. We made the border closing by only a few minutes and didn’t get a bag, wallet, or passport stolen. Considering the trek we made, I’d call it a big success.
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