Asian Adventure (Part IV)

Our exit from Thailand was not quite straightforward: the plan was to catch the overnight sleeper train south from Chiang Mai to Bangkok and then catch an early morning bus from the capital to the Aranyaprathet-Poipet border crossing. Unfortunately when we arrived at the train station it became clear that the rains which had plagued our stay in Chiang Mai had been more widespread across the country. This had cause flooding of the tracks about 120 miles south of Chiang Mai so our train was cancelled... After half an hours mild panic and half formed plans we purchased tickets for an overnight bus to Bangkok. We almost certainly paid vastly over the odds (unable to access the information as to how much we should pay we were sitting ducks) but as this was still less than our train tickets, we simple chalked that one up to experience.

The journey was reasonably comfortable and at 5am we alighted onto an already warm and sticky Bangkok street. We made a rapid exit, this time on a public bus for the 5 hour trip to the  Thai-Cambodian border at Aranyaprathet. We were dropped at Roang Kluea market, a vast warren shops selling literally tons of every imaginable ware (from shoes to electric fans to fruit to engine parts, I could go on...). We eventually wound our way to the border area, here we were met by men clutching signs with my name on, the hostel which we had booked in Siem Reap had arranged for us to be met by 'reliable' taxi drivers who would take us the 2 hour trip down fro the border for a fixed price. While they kept up that end of the bargain, they still tried to fool us in to going to one of the many "Visa express" or fake "Cambodian consulate" operations who promise to organise your cambodian visa for a premium from the Thai side of the border. Luckily forewarned is forearmed and the marvellous www.talesofasia.com site had described the crossing process and the various traps in painstaking details, so we were able to dance through the various immagration procedures, acquire visas (refusing flat the requests for 100Baht bribes from the notoriously corrupt Cambodian immigration officials along the way) and entered Cambodia within the hour.

Upon our eventual arrival at Hak's House in Siem Reap we were greeted by the eponymous owner and quickly helped to settle in. That evening Louisa and I wandered in to town and  enjoyed exploring the night market.

Siem Reap has a preponderance of "Dr. fish" shops, similar to those which have recently sprouted up in many UK shopping centres, while we didn't try these out we were reassured by the signs promising "no piranhas". The night market was beautiful and had plenty of souvenirs for sale, however at times the storeholders were overly aggressive. The response to "sir, you buy something?! Sir!" gradually went from a polite "no thank you" to a grumpy "No!".

We had an early-ish night because we had to be up sharp in the morning to travel onwards to Phnom Penh...