Thailand / Cambodia Border

If the journey was easy perhaps I wouldn’t feel like I’ve achieved much, and in this case I feel like we’ve achieved a lot!

We woke at about 5am this morning in Bangkok, where the rain was torrential. Apparently it had only been raining three hours and some of the roads were covered in nearly a foot of water. We grabbed a metered taxi and asked to take us to the skytrain, which was just around the corner, but as usual we found a stupid driver who tried to take us to the train station which also had the skytrain. Eventually he turned around and dropped us at the nearest station, so we payed him for what it would have cost had he gone there to start with, and onto the sky train. This was the straight forward part as Bangkok does have a great metro and skytrain system. Clean, efficient and signs in English. We got off at Ho Chit, near the nothern bus terminal.

The guidebook says go to the northern bus terminal and there are busses every hour to Aranyprathet, the Thai border to Cambodia. So we carried the heavy luggage down the stairs and to the bus stops. It was all very complicated and different people told us different bus numbers. Everything was in Thai and nobody could speak particularly good English, and at one point I thought we were never going to make it. However eventually someone pointed us in the right direction and we got a bus to the bus station and bought a ticket for a bus to Aran.

We left at 7.45am and arrived in Aran at about 12.00. We didn’t have any problems getting a tuk-tuk to the actual border and were met on the Thai side with English speaking officials, specially to help tourists. I got the Thai exit stamp and have a Cambodian stamp in my passport. I was pleased as I got the visa for $20, no scams or ‘tea money’ requests. After taking another tuk-tuk to where the taxies departed from we found a German couple to share 3 hour ish taxi ride with.

As soon as we were driving out into the countryside I had a really positive feeling about Cambodia. I think I like it more than Thailand. Our guesthouse (Two Dragons) is luxurious compared to what we’ve been used to, and I’ve just had a lovely meal of freshwater fish with lemon grass and an orange sauce. Despite it feeling like such hard work to get here and travelling for nearly twelve hours it feels good. Tomorrow we shall see Angkor.