Cambodia, 13 Nov 2006 --
After our exciting trip to Borneo, we headed back to Bangkok to do some serious errand running and then spent an amazing four days in Koh Chang, my new favorite island paradise. In hindsight, it was a good thing that we had so much time to relax and regain some energy just in time for our next destination - Cambodia. Lonely Planet once used the analogy that if Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia was your first stop in SE Asia, it is the kiddie pool of travel. Extending that analogy, Thailand is a little deeper (and probably pleasant with a sandy bottom and colorful fish), and Cambodia is where your toes don’t quite touch the bottom anymore.
From Koh Chang we took a ferry to a town in Thailand called Trat, where most guesthouses sell two day packages to get all the way to Sihanoukville, Cambodia. Our guidebook said that it was possible to do the trip in one day, so at 5:45 AM we woke up in Trat and began a long, confusing day.
First, we tried to get a taxi to the bus station to catch the 6:30 bus to the border in Hat Lek. The taxi driver didn’t understand “bus station” but he knew “Hat Lek”so he agreed to take us there. Soon we were on the road in the back of a share taxi (pick up truck with benches in the back) with 8 other people, one of whom was a small boy with no pants. My guess he was Cambodian, because it seems small boys in Cambodia are not required to wear pants.
Once we got to Hat Lek, a bunch of young men offered to taxi us to the mini-bus to Sihanoukville. We vaguely agreed to go with them after we crossed the border. Of course, the minibus leaves at 9:00 and it is 8:30, so we are in a bit of a rush and the boys with the taxi even filled out some of the forms for us. Our guide book said you could pay for the visa in American dollars, but the guards demanded 1,200 Thai baht each, which we didn’t have. One of the taxi guys offered to “loan” us the money, which seemed extremely shady. Finally, after we looked despondent long enough, the guard went “Okay, $30 each,” which was actually quite a deal since one guide book said we should expect to have to pay “extra fines,” and that is less than they wanted us to pay in baht. With visas in hand, we got into the “taxi,” which is an unmarked Camry, which we were told by our tourist guide we should also expect to overpay for. On the way, we went over a bridge with a toll and one of the taxi boys said we needed to pay 4,800 Cambodian reil for. We didn’t have any, we said. It’s OK, I’ll loan it to you and we can stop by the money exchanger in town, he said. Right. Smells scammy. In no time we at the money exchanger, which is really a small stand that also sells juice. Andris tries to exchange just a few leftover baht, but the lady doesn’t seem interested. We’re running late, so we get back in the car. Once we get to the mini-bus we pay the cab driver, and try to repay the guy who paid the toll with more baht than the toll actually cost. The mini-bus people charged us 700 baht per ticket to Sihanoukville instead of the 550 it is supposed to be, despite our protests, but there wasn’t much we could do at this point. Our bags disappeared and were supposedly on top of the minibus under a tarp (which they were). Meanwhile, the guy who loaned us the money was dogging Andris for more money for “helping” us at the border, but Andris stayed firm in that he already over-repaid him double.
We were ushered into a mini-bus full of grumpy looking tourists before I realized our tickets say “Phnom Phen.” We bolt out of the mini-bus to change tickets, but the guy at the ticket window just crossed it out and wrotes”Sihanoukville.” The other tourists confirmed that many of them were, in fact, going to Sihanoukville. A few moments later we were on an incredibly bumpy, dirt road. The trip was about 6 hours, and included four ferry trips across rivers. Also, by ferry I mean four rowboats with blanks across them that the minibus drives on to (we got out of the minibus for this, of course).
During the trip we compared notes with the other travelers, who confirmed that our experience was about as good as can be expected. We underpayed at the border, overpaid for the tickets, and no one knew what the deal with the money exchanging scam was. One French Canadian, who had been to Cambodia several times, said that one problem with Cambodia is that “they always want just a little bit more money, which makes it hard to trust people.” So far, that has seemed to be true. Add on to that the run-down nature of everything, and Cambodia, so far, has been exhausting. I think we’ve been here four days, and in that time we’ve rented three broken motorbikes (they ran, just no odometer, speedometer, or gas gauge), had one dramatic argument with a cabdriver over inflated, mis-quoted fares, taken a tourist truck that broke down twice in Bokor National Park (where land-mines and tigers are “rare”so don’t go off trail), got invited to dinner that we were then asked to pay for, and ran out of gas once with the motor bike because the guy renting it swore that we would have enough for our destination. Luckily, children sell soda bottles full of gas on their front lawns, so this wasn’t much of a problem. Whew, I’m exhausted just writing about it.
Oh, and Cambodia is beautiful and has a tragic history that is difficult and interesting. But more about that on another day.
Categories Cambodia