The Unscammables

A lovely bit of breakfast. That is what we were enjoying in the morning before leaving the country, and it’s what we wouldn’t have been doing had we not got the minibus tickets all the way through to Siem Reap. And we would have had to get up at 4:00am, which was obviously not ideal. What was not ideal also was that when we came down for breakfast we saw the German guys sitting outside the breakfast area. We would have to go past them to get to the food and do the painful “hello, you are still here then?” conversation. We got through it and then got packed to go. By the time we had eventually come back downstairs to check out they were still there. Their lift hadn’t yet arrived so we waited with them until our lift turned up and said our last goodbye, and crossed our fingers that it would be the last!

We were crammed into a Toyota minibus that had every seat filled, and I ended up sitting up front with the driver. We would have about a 4 hour drive to the border, so we would all need to get comfortable and make the time pass as best we could. My first plan was to grab some extra shut-eye, and got about 2 hours in without even trying, and apparently distracting the driver into the bargain. We stopped off for a fill-up of fuel and a toilet break and then we were back on the road again. Having a front-row seat of the driving was not ideal. The road is notorious for bad driving, but I wasn’t in fear for my life as some forums were suggesting. It was quite common to be 3-a-breast as cars, buses and trucks would be overtaking the slower tuk-tuks and motorbikes with sidecars along the way.

The mini-van to the border

Eventually, we stopped at a roadside café and they advised us that they were switching vehicles. It all seemed a bit fishy to us, as we had heard many, many stories about cheap bus tickets that carried with them a number of different scams, all designed to separate us with our Baht/Riel/Dollars. Then one of the guys called me and James over and bundled us into a mini-van waiting nearby, as we were the only ones going with that particular company, the other 20 or so people would have to wait for their transport. We didn’t know whether to take this as good or bad, but the guy in the mini-van with us seemed very friendly. After advising him on our length of stay and that we had booked hotels for our Cambodia visit we were let out of the van to arrange our visas.

Hoping for no scams...

Scam #1 – They will try and get you to get a visa from a Visa Arrangement Agency, which will cost half as much again as the proper price of the visa ($30 instead of $20). We were advised that it would cost 1,000 Baht / $30 and I instantly knew that this was part of the scam, with the extra money going to the guy in the van and the travel agency, even though the visa is totally legit. With me and James both flapping about it costing only $20 the guy behind the glass screen said we would have to sort it at the border. Which was fine by us, as this was the norm, and would definitely cost $20. Surprisingly enough our chirpy mini-van guy was pretty quiet when he realised that he wouldn’t be getting a cut of Scam #1 and he dropped us off at the border stating that once we were through we would be met on the other side by someone from their company. We had each been given a turquoise sticker with “AZ” written on it, and that is how their driver would identify us. But there was no way for us to identify him, or where to find him. Fishy.

As we approached the border we didn’t really know where we were going, but we managed to follow the rest of the crowd into passport control. We still had no visa; just the completed bit of paper from the Visa Arrangement Agency, a passport photo and a twenty buck note. We made it through passport control and into the next area, a no-mans-land with a couple of casinos looming over us and many, many people on the sell, beg and scam. We found the place where we would obtain our visa and marched inside. We got the papers and began filling them out, as apparently the ones we had done already were not sufficient. Once complete I handed my paper, photo and passport over to the guy behind the glass screen. As I did so, a captain sidled up to me and pointed to a bit of paper on which was written in pink highlighter pen (very official, like) “800 Baht or $20 + 100 Baht.

Scam #2 – the Border Police will try and get you to pay an extra 100 or 200 Baht on top of the official $20 fee. This money just goes straight into their pockets and we mumbled along the lines of we had spent it all in Thailand as we were leaving the country. After a while the captain grunted and appeared to give the go-ahead for the visas to be completed without the extra bribe…I mean “fee” in Baht. We soon had our visas and were then thrust back into the casino no-mans-land area to look for our next driver. After not being able to locate him we realised we would need to go through immigration (none of these are signposted by the way, and nobody tells you where to go). It took forever to get through and all we had to comfort us was a revolving fan that kept blowing our AZ sticker off of increasingly-sodden t-shirts. We got through immigration before I had a massive go at the officials for being slow, leaving the window just as I was about to get done, and for having a massage in the back when I saw through the curtain. It was still roastingly hot outside, but at least we had made it through and were technically in Cambodia. Brilliant!

No-mans-land...but nearly in Cambodia

We found our driver (I was beginning to wonder if this was Scam #3 – no driver on the other side) and he ordered us to wait with the rest of the others in the open-air bus stop. Our bus turned up and it was a short drive to the main bus terminal where we were to change busses yet again. After seeing a midget and a military jeep parked outside we jumped onto our scheduled coach and tried our best to get comfy. It was difficult, because it was SO HOT in there. We were already sweating from being outside, but the fact that there was little AC on the coach and that the seats were plastic made it pretty difficult to get comfortable. We would have another 3 or 4 hour journey ahead of us, so I caught some more shut-eye to try and make the journey go as quickly as possible.

Nuff said

I woke as we pulled into a small truck-stop along the main road. The main road was just one long road right through from Bangkok to Siem Reap and on to Phnom Penh, with everything along the roadside. I noticed a lot of volleyball being played, and that there was a lot of home-brew going on in a variety of bottles. After a 20 minute break (essentially so that everyone on board could buy something from the little shop that more than likely greased the palms of the drivers) we were off again. I figured we would get in by about 5:00pm and we weren’t far off.

Buy a small house for a Land God?

Scam # 3 – the bus company will drop you off, not in the local bus station, but somewhere where their mates will be waiting with a load of tuk-tuks and motorbikes to fleece the newly-arrived foreigners. We were wise to their game and got a ride to our hotel for 120 Baht, down from 300 Baht (Thai Baht is accepted, but you get a rubbish exchange rate/value for money). The guy in the tuk-tuk with us was friendly, even to the point of offering to sell us a small bag of marijuana, which we declined. It was $20!

We arrived at our hotel soon after and were a little surprised. It was a lovely looking place, but the road and the surroundings were much worse quality. But we had read that from the reviews and were happy with our choice. We checked in and grabbed a much needed shower. We were starving from the trip so we wandered out and found the main drag. Without street-lights too. We had to navigate by the headlights of motorbikes and tuk-tuks that would frequently come from behind us and beep their horn to let us know they were there. We ate at a place that did a great Siem Reap Curry, I think, and draught beers for 50cents. Now this we could get used to!

Nice hotel!

We were still pretty wiped from the trip from Thailand so after a couple of beers we crashed at the hotel and set a late alarm – we had not planned in much for the next day and would be mainly recharging the ol’ batteries.