Journey to Cambodia.
Where to start? Last Sunday, I took a third-class, non air-con train to Aranya Prathet, which is on the border of Cambodia. The train left Bangkok before 6 a.m., and the trip was about 6 hours long. I sat in slightly padded, yet still uncomfortable seats. The windows of the train were all open, so I felt as though I were skydiving for the entire 6 hour trip, or perhaps given a face lift. By the time I reached Aranya Prathet, my skin was caked in dust from the journey. On the train ride, there were vendors roaming the isles, selling food and drinks from baskets, as well as comic books and toys. I noticed that the farther we got out of Bangkok, the more people smiled. Almost everyone on the train was Thai, and unlike in BKK, there were lots of mothers traveling with small babies. If I thought that I got a lot of stares as a "farang" in BKK, it became much more blatant in the rural areas and in Cambodia. If in BKK I have two heads, in Cambodia, I certainly have three. Actually, I find myself staring at the white people as well, wondering what their story is, and where they are from.
In order to get onto this early train, I took a cab from my apartment, and on the ride, I had a short conversation in thai with the driver. He asked me where I was going, and I told him, "Bpai Cambucha," and he made a sort of grunt/laugh, like I was crazy, and then he said "kon diao?" Or "by yourself?" I told him, yes, I was traveling alone. He made more grunting/snorting noises, and we left it at that.
After arriving in Aranya Prathet, I grouped up with a couple of backpackers, and we shared a Tuk Tuk to the border, stopping briefly to get our Cambodian visa ($30). At the border, we were herded into the long "foreigner" line to get stamped out of Thailand. There is a no-man's-land gap between Thailand and Cambodia of a couple hundred feet, and then we queued up at another line to show our Cambodian visa and be admitted across the border. On the Cambodian side is Poipet, which is a real armpit of a place, with unpaved, torn up streets and a coating of dust over everything. Poipet is also a casino town, with thai folks coming across the border to gamble. At this point, I joined forces with two other americans, each traveling alone, and we walked down the central street of Poipet to find the taxi stand. The three of us hired a taxi for what I later found out was a considerably inflated price ($20 each), and we set off for Siem Reap. None of us really had the energy or patience to negotiate a cheaper price, and the taxi company has a very official-looking office, with a glass window, and that made it seem as though we could not bargain with them. I had heard widely varying figures about how long the ride to Siem Reap would be, ranging from 3-6 hours. The road is almost entirely unpaved, but we were very lucky that it was dry, so our trip took just 3 hours. Along the way, we chatted about Bangkok, having each just come from there, comparing ideas about restaurants, etc. My two fellow travelers each had tickets to fly out of Siem Reap, and I was the only one with the misfortune to be repeating the slow and tedious trip by land back across the border. I was satisfied, though, that I would be spending significantly less on the return than they would.
When we reached Siem Reap, we were deposited at a taxi stand just outside of town where we then took a tuk tuk to our hostel. I followed the younger american who seemed to have the same "as cheap as possible" mentality towards accomodations.