Wèi shénme bù?: Cambodia, Chapter 1: Angkor Wat?!

Once again we were conned by a tourist agency about our transportation. We thought we booked a minivan/visa combination package and would be dropped off at our hotel in Siem Reap. How wrong we were!

Like I said, we hopped on a minivan from Bangkok heading towards Poipet in Cambodia (the border town used for crossing). It was a long old drive, but not the worst I’ve experienced and we had valium to pass the time. The trouble, however, began at the border on the Thailand side. Good Lord it was hell. Firstly, we were told that the price of the visa was more than we had expected it to be and that if we decided to go through the visa office ourselves, our minivan wouldn’t wait the other side for us (despite us having paid for transport all the way). Not music to our ears, and there were other tourists with us who felt equally screwed over. Eventually though (after seriously offending our ‘guide’ and having to deal with the manager of the organisation) we haggled the visa price down to what we had originally expected: 20 USD. So after we had our visas, we were taken to the border itself and after a fairly painful queue to get our passports checked, we were in! One thing I found odd about Cambodia was that it operates on two currencies: the US dollar and Cambodian riel. So both are totally acceptable to use which took a bit of time getting used to!

There it is: Cambodia!
(Walking out after the passport check)

Our stress didn’t end there though unfortunately. After passing the checkpoint, we had to wait (again, not told how long for) for our bus to come in which would then take us to the bus station where we could get transport to Siem Reap. However, when we arrived at the bus station we were told that the bus we had paid for wouldn’t leave for another two hours or so, and not wanting to arrive that late in Siem Reap, we (along with a handful of other tourists) decided to book another minivan to take us. Getting INCREDIBLY frustrated and tired by this point, but the driver we booked with was to drop us all off at our respective hotels so that would be alright right? WRONG! Once again, we were conned. Instead of taking us to our hotel, we were taken to what I think was the bus station just outside of Siem Reap. Outraged we were! All tired, confused and sick of being taken advantage of, we refused to get out of the minivan until someone told us what was happening. The fact that our driver immediately jumped out and ran off without saying a word was the icing on a very stale cake. It got pretty heated with raised voices flying from a lot of people (including a nosey tuk tuk driver) and although we wanted to complain to someone/anyone, steal the minivan keys or even just start throwing punches we begrudgingly hired two tuk tuks to take us to our hotel and be done with this long day. Bloody conmen. So needless to say, our impression of Cambodia at this point was not a very good one at all. There was only one thing for it: go out and get drunk. One positive to come out of it all though was that we had chosen a cracking hotel; really friendly/helpful staff, very comfy rooms and a rooftop pool!

Outside Angkor What? bar in Siem Reap

Siem Reap from our hotel roof. Very flat town

My first taste of Cambodian food: Fish Amok Curry.
Yum yum for my tum

Putting our traumatic journey aside, we focussed on the present and Siem Reap is, of course, famous for its use as a base to explore Angkor Wat. We decided to leave a day for relaxing and wandering the town after that awful journey so postponed Angkor Wat until our last full day. And what a long day it was! We wanted to see the sunrise over the temple so were up and about at 4am, arriving on site at about 5.15am. No queue for tickets at this time so we nipped in, had our photos taken (to avoid multiple people using one ticket I guess) and tickets printed! Seeing as we were on a bit of a tight schedule, we went for the one day pass which was $20. To be honest, I think if you don’t want to see every single temple in the complex (and there are a LOT) you can easily do it in a single day – we were all Angkor-ed out by 11am, having spent a good 6 hours there. We had hired a tuk tuk driver through our hotel who took us to Angkor Wat, drove us from temple to temple (as walking would have taken a lot of time) and then took us back to the hotel after we had finished – costing $20 between four of us. Obviously pictures here will be a lot better than anything I can say, so here they are!