Angkor Whaaat?

After an interesting introduction to Cambodia, we were feeling a bit skeptical.

But nevertheless we had to venture out into Siem Reap... We explored the streets around the old market area including the infamous Pub Street.

Angkor Sunrise
(Click to enlarge)

Our main reason for going to Cambodia was to visit Angkor Wat. A huge complex of stone temples built for king Suryavarman II as the capital city and state temple hundreds of years ago.  The first major building began around the 12th Century and continued for 5 centuries.  The stone was transported over 40km and building for Angkor Wat specifically took only 40 years, however one modern engineer estimated it would take 300 years to complete Angkor Wat today.  The most well known of the temples is Angkor Wat, however there is said to be over 1000 temples in the 150sq km area that makes up entire complex.

Mr T

Angkor Wat was incredible, Rick was keen to get a sunrise shot so we arose at 4am and Mr T; our tuk tuk driver drove us to Angkor. We had seen photo's and researched a bit, but I wasn't quite sure what to expect. As we walked over the moat that surrounds Angkor Wat, all you see is an immense silhouette, it's quite mysterious as you're wondering if it's really that big! The sunrise was a non event, but worth getting up early because as more light filters through you gradually see more and more of how amazing Angkor Wat is. We explored all the corridors and the chambers inside of Angkor Wat and just marvelled at the amazing construction that the Khmer had somehow built over 800 years ago.

Bayon, Angkor Thom

We moved through South Gate onto Angkor Thom, to the Bayon temple. The construction was far more haphazard than Angkor Wat, and seemed to be less thought out. Bayon was built by a different King and seemed to add areas onto the temple as he saw fit. It was by far our favourite temple, with multi levels and peaks with huge four sided faces. Access to upper levels was unrestricted if you could make your way up the tiny steps made for little asian feet.

Ta Prom

After some pineapple from a street stall and a few not so significant temples we headed to Ta Prohm, the temple made famous by Tomb Raider, was also very cool. For the most part it was far less restored, though our visit was interrupted by a lot of workers and scaffolding. The trees were taking over, they were growing amongst the green moss covered stones as if they were claiming back their forest. The massive tree roots were growing through the stones and toppling over whole walls and choking entire buildings! Photo's without a group of 30 typical camera clutching tourists proved difficult, however Rick still managed to fill up 12GB worth of memory cards.

Monkey vs Tuk Tuk

There is so much to take in, it's really mind blowing and by 1pm we were brain fried! We headed back via the monkey's which proved to be Rick's highlight of Asia! Masses of monkey's lined the road, waiting to be fed by tourists, who bought banana's off the street stall hawkers. As soon as we stepped off our tuk tuk there were monkey's all over it, tearing at the canvas and playing with everything.

We trekked back to Pub Street and refueled on a traditional Cambodian barbeque, chowing down snake, crocodile, prawns, beef and chicken. All washed down with a few glasses of 50cent Angkor Pilsner beer. 

Sweet Bar

Cambodia.. First impressions

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. 

A very friendly (caution, danger danger) man tells us that we need one more stamp and leads us down the street to another pretty much identical looking office, so we stand with 100 other people and wait for another 15, they check our visas (fingers, toes crossed) and we get a stamp.. Then this lovely chap leads us to the 'free' bus to the government transport station 15 mins away.

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

30+ hrs overland travel - AKA - Worst Travel Fail Ever

It's been a while since we've posted... We spent two solid days on the road travelling up to Cambodia!

And when we say two days we mean it. We got on the ferry at Koh Phangan at 12:30pm to go back to Bangkok the onto Cambodia.

After about 3 hrs on the ferry, we landed at Surathani and then carried on by bus to a meal break at the bus company headquarters, where we had to change bus. We ate 40baht Pad Thai and waited for the next bus to arrive. About 6:30pm that bus left for Bangkok, this would be home till 6am!! Some sleeping, Kindergarten Cop and another Leonardo DiCaprio movie, lots of iPod games, some more attempts to sleep, another movie (probly with Leonardo DiCaprio), and we arrive 18 hrs since we left Koh Phangan!

Turns out it's actually 4am, a bus two hours ahead of schedule in Asia that unheard of. "Lucky" for us we can try catch the 6am train to Cambodia. So we Tuk Tuk across town from Khao San Road to Hua Lumpong Train station to find the ticket station closed till 5:30am. So some more sleeping in a huge open station room with hundreds of locals from whole family's, fluroesently safron colored monks, business people and stall owners with all their goods waiting. We grab our tickets, oh did i mention it's 3rd class only, with air conditioning Thai style.. (windows) but they were 48 Baht each for a 5 hr trip!

The train was actually quite enjoyable, and no doubt would have been much more so; if we hadn't already been non stop travelling for 20 hrs at this stage!

A lot of bumps, a lot of people, a lot of stops and 6hrs later we arrive at Aranyaprathet which is the last Thai stop before the border. We jumped in a Tuk Tuk and headed for the Cambodia Border!

Ciao for now!

Rick