Crossing Borders

Today, I made the overland trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap, which is notorious among backpackers for numerous scams and hassles. “Tourist bus” tickets sold by travel agents are all rip-offs: they claim that they will take 6 hours from Bangkok to Siem Reap, but in reality they take 12-16 hours, have no air-con, can cost up to 600 baht, and you end up arriving in front of an overpriced guesthouse in Siem Reap at midnight with no other option than to check-in for the night (with the travel agencies getting a kick-back from the guesthouse for EVERY poor soul they drop off there). Also, these services overcharge you for the Cambodian Visa, which you apply for at the border . The other option, flying from Bangkok to Siem Reap, is just as absurd – Bangkok Airways has a monopoly on the route and charges $350-$400 round trip for the 45 minute flight. To avoid getting ripped off, I decided to find my own way across the border.

So I left my hostel in Bangkok, took the BTS SkyTrain to Mo Chit , and a taxi to the Northeastern Bus Terminal at kon song mor chit . From there, I took a domestic Thai bus with air-con to Aranya Prathet, a border town about which my Lonely Planet guidebook has this to say: “Parts of this area are still heavily mined – don’t stray too far from marked roads and paths.” You gotta love knowing that you’re walking around a minefield. I know I did.

Fortunately I didn’t blow up. When we arrived I asked a tuk-tuk (a motorbike taxi) driver to bring me to Talat Rong Kluea so I could enter the Thai immigration office. He brought me to a not-so-official looking building where about five kind-of-but-also-not-really-official looking men were waiting on the street. One of the men spoke in perfect English to invite me inside to fill out an application for my visa.

The office consisted of a few desks, some posters of Angkor Wat, and a few poorly translated signs. They tried to talk me into paying 2000 baht for a taxi to Siem Reap, telling me I needed to prepay before crossing the border, but I just said I wanted the visa and things were sorted out pretty easily.

I walked across the border into Cambodia and then went through customs. I found myself at a taxi stand in Poipet, where a bunch of Cambodians in Toyota Camrys were waiting like hawks. Luckily, a guy from New York and an Austrian girl were also trying to get into Siem Reap so we shared a taxi together and paid $20 each. About 2 hours later, when we were 5 minutes outside of Siem Reap, our driver pulled over and motorbike taxis took us the rest of the way, even though the taxi driver had assured us we wouldn't need to change cars...apparently nothing on this overland trip is as simple as it could be.

But alas, I arrived at The Warehouse in Siem Reap and met up with Gabe and Miles. It took a bit longer than I expected (~9 hours), consisted of a sky train, two taxis, three motorbike taxis, and a bus trip, but all things considered, the trip from Bangkok overland into Siem Reap really wasn’t so bad, especially given some of the horror stories that I had been hearing, and the fact that I was traveling alone. It's good to be around some familiar faces, in a strictly unfamiliar place. I have a pretty good feeling about Cambodia.