Journey to Siem Reap, Cambodia

From Bangkok, a fellow retreatant and I took an airconditioned (barely) bus to Aranyah Prathet near the Cambodia border with Thailand. Not the area where the fighting is breaking out (a mere 4.6km square is what they are fighting over - pathetic territorial claims) but further south.

The bus was fine, cost BHT370 each (over $10). Got a tuk-tuk (picture of which I will get up here some day....@#$!) to the border from the station and then walked across. Paid $30 for the visa in Cambodia and then walked into their country. What greeted us?... - the first thing you see is a huge roundabout surrounded by a mud road with ruts up to 2 feet deep in places. There was easily 100 tuk-tuk and truck drivers sitting/ standing around, looking hard and shouting at us to take their transport. They approached us quite insistently (not quite aggressively) and said "where you go-eeng?" . We told them Siem Reap. One guy latched onto us earlier on while we were filling out our visa forms at the Cambodian border and was trying to get us to pay him 2,000 BHT ($66) to get on the back of a pickup truck (which already was full with 5 passengers and huge bags!) for the 150 km drive. We decided to go further into the (awful) town of Poi Pet even though it was getting dark at this point. Another man approached and offered himself and his Camry for $200 (!!) which we scoffed at (prices here are relative, you must remember). I finally bargained him down to $100, but only after 20 minutes of haggling with his friend (the guy who wanted to get us on the truck in the first place), and after the 3 of us - we picked up a 22 year old American from the bus to travel with us to Siem Reap - walking away from him. He obviously knew there were better deals where we were headed and so dropped his price as soon as we turned away.

On the road to Siem Reap, parts of the way are paved, parts are not. Some were pretty rough, and after we had passed numerous trucks (personal sized trucks, to give you Americans some idea of scale, with sides on the back), overloaded with passengers and cargo, we were delighted to have paid $33 each for this trip, to be safe inside a good car. Passengers on the trucks are subject to endless dust, storms, rain, and incessant noise from honking cars, trucks, articulated lorries, motorcycles and buses. There is no nedian strip painted on the road, not to mind any other decorations (such as road signs/ speed signs/ cat's eyes, et c.), so it is literally a free-for-all, with trucks overtaking motorbikes, overtaking cars, overtaking bicycles and pedestrians. Nuts!

1.5 hours into the trip we stopped in a town, in a dark, deserted market square where 8 men approached us from different directions, looking quite menacing. Our driver said nothing as he stepped out of the car and greeted these strangers. Inside the car, my thoughts began to race as I tried to make sense of these men now gathered around our car and bending down to lookn in at us. I asked Tricia and Jamie if either of them had a weapon - between us we could have 6 fists. After a few minutes the men moved away and after 10 gruelling minutes of worrying and fretting, the driver came back with the men. One of them leaned in and gave us some badly garbled English words - along the lines of 'driver...my fazzer....driver....my fazzer...you go to Siem Reap?" which didn't make sense but at least he was speaking to us. Turned out the driver had to pick up his son and another man who jammed into the front seat together. I didn't see them pay anything - harumph! They turned around to face us, staring and laughing at us (again, not the most comfortable of situations when we didn't know what exactly was going on), and we took off.

About 15 minutes into the remainder of the journey (it takes 4 hours as the road is paved for sections only), the new guys took out a mini dvd player and proceeded to serenade us with Cambodian, lovesick 'pop' music. Free entertainment - wuhoo! (joke)
By about the 16th song (and there is a reason the music has not made it across the Pacific - it's dreadful!), just as we were about to breach the limits of sanity, Tricia recognised the tune of the song that was playing - it was the Cambodian version of John Lennon's 'Imagine'! We were delirious with karaoke by then so we began to sing along in English. The guys up front thought this was great altogether and so they stopped the dvd and reset it to the karaoke version! (i.e. Cambodian words on the screen, background music and no singer) for our benefit. We belted it out as best we could (sorry Jamie!) and gave them the real version.

Finally arrived in Siem Reap at 10.30pm, very glad that we had taken the car rather than a truck (as the roads were so bad) and booked into a hostel for a mere $3 per night each (private room with bathroom!).