Journey through hell

Monday FEbruary 4th

To be honest after everything I had heard about the trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap, the overall journey was not too bad.

The day started off with the usual Thai mess about organising the trip. It took them ages to sort out who was on the bus, how far they were going and so on. So by the time we left Bangkok it was already 8.30 and it was supposed to be a 7.00 bus.

But to be honest I think a lot of the delays are actually planned, as the whole point of the trip is to get you to arrive late in Siem Reap so you end up checking into the hotel they want. What amazed me most was the amount of Thai it took to get us all moving. There seemed to be about 10 people involved in getting the bus going and there were only 15 of us on board. A couple more on the Cambodia side and it is almost 1 person for every one person moved.

It took about 4 hours to get from Bangkok to the border. Amazingly the road was not good, and not even direct, I guess its not really a priority route for the Thai government to deal with. When we got to the border the bus pulled into a local restaurant where we had lunch. If there was a rip off I couldn't find it as the meal was cheaper than anything I had in Bangkok. People who had no visas for Cambodia got theirs processed then. It hardly seemed worth having arranged it in Khao San.

The border crossing was an amazing experience. You have to walk through, its about 2 km. And its like walking down the strip in Las Vegas. There are Casinos everywhere in no man's land. although we got loads of warnings from our guides about pickpockets it didn't seem too unsafe. The queue at the Cambodian border was a bit long, because all the buses arrive at the same time.

When you get over the border there was a bit of messing about with bus tranfers. Our guide said it was because of the police, but everyone on board thought here comes some scam. But to be honest we ended up on a fairly nice bus (we thought we were going to be put in pickups or something) and I think they may actually have been right. The police at the border did appear to be in on some scams, and our company was protecting us.

From the lunch stop to getting on the actual bus that took us to Siem Reap it took about 4 hours to cross the border. Then we were off on a road trip that never really got above 35 kmph. It was fun. The road was unsealed so had potholes all over the place. And the governemnt is relpacing all the bridges on the route so we had to go across temporary embankments all the time. It took over 5 hours to travel the 150 km to Siem Reap, with a dinner stop, that again was not a rip off.

Here we met another bus and from talking to them it seems we had a good journey. Our bus had empty seats, they had to put baggage in the aisles. An American from that bus who has done this journey 10 times said the whole reason for the fact that the road is taking so long to complete is that the airline that flies from Bangkok to Siem Reap is bunging the officials. Makes sense. Its apparently the last major route in Cambodia not to be tarmac'd.

If we thought the journey was bad in the day, when it got dark it got really hairy. It was pitch black outside, so you couldn't see where the road was. But interestingly most of the roadworks we saw were continuing on under floodlight. The funny part was when we arrived at Siem Reap. On minute we were in pitch dark, the next minute neon madness of another Las Vegas like strip. All the big hotels were on the airport side of the town, but our destination was on the other side of town.

Eventually, at 9.30 pm, we got to our hotel. I say our hotel, the bus drops you at one and you don't really have much option. But it is cheap, $6 a night, and seems clean and secure (safety deposit box in the room), so I'll stay there.

Finished the night off with a few beers in the hotel with some fellow survivors of our 14 hour journey.