Cambodia..
It didn't start well for Cambodia.. But in the end we loved it.
Any country that you enter after 30+ hours of travelling is gonna get a bit of a rough deal.
We had been researching how to get into Cambodia for a few weeks and reading up online about the infamous land border crossing!
Stories of tourists paying $40 dollars for their visa when the official price is $20 US dollars because of massive corruption by the border police. Other stories of people offering to help carry your bags only to charge you for that offer. Even worse was one we heard about visa 'agents'..'helping' with paperwork where they do everything for you, issuing you a 'visa', charging you more than at the border only having to actually pay again at the border for a legitamate visa..
With all this and more in our minds we still decided to do the land border crossing because it was way cheaper than flying direct in SuratThani.
So we are in a Tuk Tuk to the border 7kms away with some other backpackers on another in front of us, and the Tuk tuks stop at a TAT( tourist information office/tourist rip of office) and I yell and don't even let him stop, then the driver drops us off on the side of the road.. Men with crisp shirts and ties come out with clip boards and try and 'help' us with the visa papers.. Once again we don't listen, and we walk away, as we had read all about the scams that run close to the border.
We finally get to the border and have to walk to the office.. Luckily we had US dollars already to avoid even more scams. We pass thru Thai visa control and then enter no mans land. Imagine a wide dusty road with huge trucks, cars, motos and hand pushed rickshaw-type carts piled high and dragging on the ground, plus loads of people everywhere.. plus a huge casino (illegal in Cambodia-so just build it on land no one governs...) and so we walk 1km with everyone else and enter a office with men with guns all leaning against a counter with a glass screen.. He hands us a form and then tells us it's $20 US plus 100baht..(ie corruption) I tell him was have no baht (I did have some) he gets all hard ass and says "you borrow off your friend", he wasn't gonna budge so I gave him the money and he takes my passport and photo and passes it thru the window and tells me to sit down. 10 mins later he points to me and gives me my passport back with very shiny... slighty official hand written full page visa with my photo all in there.. We wait for the other tourist friends and then walk on again.
It didn't start well for Cambodia.. But in the end we loved it.
Any country that you enter after 30+ hours of travelling is gonna get a bit of a rough deal.
We had been researching how to get into Cambodia for a few weeks and reading up online about the infamous land border crossing!
Stories of tourists paying $40 dollars for their visa when the official price is $20 US dollars because of massive corruption by the border police. Other stories of people offering to help carry your bags only to charge you for that offer. Even worse was one we heard about visa 'agents'..'helping' with paperwork where they do everything for you, issuing you a 'visa', charging you more than at the border only having to actually pay again at the border for a legitamate visa..
With all this and more in our minds we still decided to do the land border crossing because it was way cheaper than flying direct in SuratThani.
So we are in a Tuk Tuk to the border 7kms away with some other backpackers on another in front of us, and the Tuk tuks stop at a TAT( tourist information office/tourist rip of office) and I yell and don't even let him stop, then the driver drops us off on the side of the road.. Men with crisp shirts and ties come out with clip boards and try and 'help' us with the visa papers.. Once again we don't listen, and we walk away, as we had read all about the scams that run close to the border.
We finally get to the border and have to walk to the office.. Luckily we had US dollars already to avoid even more scams. We pass thru Thai visa control and then enter no mans land. Imagine a wide dusty road with huge trucks, cars, motos and hand pushed rickshaw-type carts piled high and dragging on the ground, plus loads of people everywhere.. plus a huge casino (illegal in Cambodia-so just build it on land no one governs...) and so we walk 1km with everyone else and enter a office with men with guns all leaning against a counter with a glass screen.. He hands us a form and then tells us it's $20 US plus 100baht..(ie corruption) I tell him was have no baht (I did have some) he gets all hard ass and says "you borrow off your friend", he wasn't gonna budge so I gave him the money and he takes my passport and photo and passes it thru the window and tells me to sit down. 10 mins later he points to me and gives me my passport back with very shiny... slighty official hand written full page visa with my photo all in there.. We wait for the other tourist friends and then walk on again.
So we get to the transport station to get to Siem Reap and find that buses are $9 each and taxis are $48 for the whole car (5-9 people). We and everyone had read that taxis we supposed to be $30 and bus $3! So I took it upon myself to bargain/scrap out the ticket officer, after both getting pissed off I got him down to 39 dollars for a whole taxi, note we were only putting 4 passengers in one car, one girl went with locals and they had 19-nineteen people in one 5 seated sedan!!
So for $9 US each we take the Toyota Camry (99% of cars we saw in Cambodia) 2hrs to Siem Reap. As usual in Asia nothing is normal and we get dropped in the rain to the Tuk Tuk station couple kms out of town, we hadn't booked anything, so took he first hostel we could, as by this stage we were quite tired and just needed to sleep. That ends the epic journey of 30+ hours which we call "greatest travel fail yet". Though it's a lesson learned, and we definately know our limits now!
Rick
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