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Other entries in Siem Reap

You Siem to Reap what you sow...

Although I had met some exceptionally nice people such as Adam (the nice American), Neil (from the Morton area of Liverpool) and Alex (who was called Alex if you were male or Alejandro Rivas-Vasquez of Venezuela if you were female, breathing and remotely attractive) in my time in BKK it really was time to go.

I forewent drinking the night before my early 7am bus and of course paid for it. I did not sleep the whole night and felt like someone had stabbed my favourite childhood teddy before liquidising it - so pretty bad.

The bus journey was a great deal of fun as it seemed necessary to stop every hour or so to see if the farang/foreigners might want to spend some money at the strategically placed restaurants along the way. Suffering from lack of sleep and a pathological hatred of food perhaps made me feel that these stops were not altogether required - or was it BECAUSE they were not altogether required?

We finally reached the Thai-Cambod border after what seemed like 10 mins actual travel and 4 hours stopping. You have to physically go through customs as with most borders and as usual it took an inordinate amount of time. Fortunately, to distract me from my boredom it was extremely hot and my dehydration was starting to reach fruition and deepen. I could not stop sweating and I certainly could not drink more than I was to counteract the loss. In a room full of farang, Thai and Asians I was the only person sweating like a guilty pig.

Luckily, that was not the cue for the customs official to strip search me before doing a cavity search... much worse was to befall me. I had to endure the Oscar-winning beggars at the border (Thailand is relatively begging-free and so there is a stark contrast when you enter Cambodia to say the least. But these people are aware of that, as they are professionals in their own right, and pray on your sensibilities - which is fair enough as they need the money desperately. But when you feel very unwell and just want to sleep, the 27th child asking for money seems a bit over the top) who I felt were perhaps the creme de la creme of beggars given the top job of representing Cambodia at the border.

Next up was the one passport official on the Cambodian side of the border who was suspicious of me. After all, I looked like the person in my photo, I had a British passport with all the correct visas and paperwork and I was a fellow Asian. Was there was a slim possibility that I was trying to smuggle Salt and Vinegar crisps into the country? Or that I might be trying to find employment amongst the beggar folk and thus deprive someone of a job? Anyway, after the customary over-checking with UV light of my passport and some first-rate squinting I gained entry to Cambodia.

The coup de grace were the arrangements for transport to Siem Reap from the border. Firstly, the tour chappie had to constantly tell us that we could not use Thai currency in Cambodia other than at this border town - so if there was anyone who needed US dollars (essentially the 1st currency of Cambodia) or Cambod Riels then now was the time to get thoroughly ripped off by a bullshit exchange rate because you had fallen for this guy's complete claptrap. Quite a few people, paranoid of having no valid currency, changed their money but I stood firm or more precisely stayed seated where I was.

The next farce was how to progress from this staging post to Siem Riep... we all had red stickers for the duration of the journey but to get on any of the incoming (and shortly departing) minibuses onward you needed a pink sticker! How did you get a pink sticker? Someone from the tour company gave you a pink sticker when they felt that the amount of time that you had waited for a sticker equalled the amount of hatred and irrational violence you felt towards them. I didn't have to wait long to be on my way.

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