Cambodia has been a pretty hectic place up till now - although the pace of life here is pretty chilled out. No, I can't work that one out, either.
We arrived under cloak of night, and were scammed from the minute we crossed the border. After this long on the road, and having been very lucky so far in avoiding the obvious rip off artists, we were 'done' for the first time on our journey. It isn't difficult to spot - usually we avoid all the 'touts', or the deals which are too good to be true, or we ask the right questions to the people we are unsure about - but this time we were stitched up like a kipper.
On crossing the border to Cambodia from Thailand, it is like stepping into another world 50 or more years behind the one you were just in. The Cambodian border town Poipet is like the wild west - dusty, dirty, pot-holed, with a smattering of big casinos (as gambling is illegal in Thailand), and a mass of poverty ridden humanity. We liked it loads, but dealing with it after a day on the road (by coach from Bangkok) and a head full of sleep isn't much fun - especially when we knew we had another 5-6 hour journey ahead of us... We were ripe pickings for the wiley tour coach operator on the border, and he knew it!
We were met, greeted, and treated to a free tuk-tuk ride to his office after asking all the right questions - 'How much will it cost?'; 'When do you leave?'; 'Do you work with guesthouses for commission delivery?'; 'Where can I get a beer?' - all with positive answers towards being a genuine operator. Despite this, we paid our $12 each to get to Siam Riep and waited with the many other tourists to get onto the coach. After an hour and a half (we were promised it would leave in 20 minutes), we discovered that many of the people had been there all afternoon, with the promise of leaving in 20 minutes, and eventually (about 18:30) the coach turned up. The coach went excrutiatingly slowly for the next 9 hours, and delivered us into the waiting guest house at 03:30 in the morning, by which time we had little choice but to take a room and try to get some sleep. Not ones to be put off, we woke the manager up just to bargain a much cheaper price (hahaha!), and settled on what we later found out to be a room half the price of the other unfortunate travellers. That'll teach them.
Oh well, I hadn't meant to go on too much about our overland entry into Cambodia from Thailand, but thought that any other traveller should be aware that
Amazing Angkor Tours and Travel are a bunch of crooks and (as my good father puts so eloquently), need stuffing with a barbed-wire trumpet.
Do not let that put you off visiting Cambodia - it is a lovely place, despite, and perhaps because of, all the tragedy that has been part of its history in the last century. Everywhere you look, there are the bright orange robes of the buddhist monks, walking serenely through temples, down city streets, or zipping through traffic whilst riding side saddle on mopeds.
The rooms are cheaper and better here than most we have stayed in, and to top it all off you can buy good red wine for $5, and eat proper fresh french baguettes... Luxury.
We have seen some great sights - Angkor Wat, rare fresh water dolphins on the Mekong River, and deserted islands in the south, and we have also had the pleasure of drinking beers courtesy of the United States Government in Kratie, after stumbling across a private party held by some US Army archeaologists who were in town for a few weeks to dig up the remains of its personnel who (I assume) got shot down whilst on operation during the Vietnam war. They had a very successful trip, by all accounts, and were having their last day party before moving to another province (further west) to resume exhuming. Apparently there are loads of dig sites in Cambodia and Laos, and many millions of $s are being spent on repatriating the remains of their fellow countrymen, so we didn't feel too bad about treating ourselves to a few of their ice cold cans of Beer Lao. I am pretty sure that with all the money George W is spending on his efforts out here, he wouldn't notice a few missing $s worth of beer...
