SCAM-bodia

March 15
530am came all too fast and up we were to check out! We met Josie and her boyfriend Mark down in the lobby (they came to the hotel last night) and headed to the train station (which luckily was right across the street from our hotel). Sleepily we slumped into our seats and headed off into the countryside. The train ride wasn’t half bad—only about 5 hrs— and it’s always nice to see parts of the country you haven’t been to before. The only frustrating thing was that this time of year is burning season in Thailand (aka the farmers burn down their land in order to prep the soil for the coming wet season/planting) which means that as you’re cruising through the fields you are getting enveloped in clouds of ash—it was reminiscent of the burning of HomeTree for those of you Avatar fans out there.

Upon arrival we were hounded by tuk tuk drivers all vying for our fare to the border. We ended up choosing the wrong one and were soon the victims of a frustrating scam! We pull up to this place on the way to the border where we are greeted by ‘officials’ with visa papers, etc. I didn’t feel right about it from the start, but it all seemed kinda legit and we were here, so whatever. They then proceeded to tell us that we couldn’t use USD to pay for the visa which should have been our signal to leave, but how can you really know? Anyway, they want us to pay for the visas in Baht which is normal (as this is what Thai people have to pay in) but you end up paying more because they give you a bad exchange rate. They kept being like ‘No no you can’t use USD at the border anymore, just baht’ and then they wanted us to pay extra for a processing fee. I looked at the guy, already a bit on edge and uncomfortable, and said we would not pay more than the visa fee in baht (which was the standard fee) and that we wanted to be taken to the border now. They got all flustered, esp when I told Mark/Josie to get their money back for the processing fee they were told they had to pay, and finally after some arguing we got our visas and headed to the border. At the border Josie and Dad went inside while Mark and I waited with the tuk tuk driver and came out telling us that USD were in fact accepted and that we had been hosed. After a mixture of yelling in broken Thai and English the tuk tuk driver refused to take us back to the place where we got our visas—so we said we were writing down his info and turning it into the Tourist Police. In reality at this point there was nothing we could do except suck it up and move on and be more wary of things like this. Lesson Learned: Trust Your Gut.

Thankfully the visas we got were in fact legitimate, just more expensive than we would have liked, and we made our way through customs, accompanied by our Customs friend: Mr. Happy. Mr. Happy helped us through the process, got us all of our stamps, put us on the shuttle to the bus station and helped us get into our shared taxi to Siem Reap (our final destination). The 4 of us crammed into the cab which seemed fine until we got on the highway and realized that we were in a British style car (which is normal for us cuz they drive on the left side of the road in Thailand). However, we soon learned that they drive on the right side of the road in Cambodia, so every time our driver went to pass he had to pull all the way over into the other lane to see if he had a clear path. Poor Dad was in the front seat fearing for his life as on more than one occasion swerving or the slamming of the brakes took place. Along the way we made a stop at some little store where the driver was like okay you can get out and get something to eat, etc and we were all like oh no that’s okay we’ll just stay in here. So, he got out and then some men proceeded to spray down the car with a hose with us inside-we’re pretty sure they were trying anything to get us to buy something, but we weren’t having it, so we just waited inside, awkwardly as other tourists were seen milling around the store.

We finally made it to Siem Reap after a 2 hr drive through the dry Cambodian countryside where we were dropped at a tuk tuk stand- again being skeptics we weren’t happy that we were being left here. It turned out to be okay as we found out the taxis/tuk tuks are part of associations (sort of like a mafia) and work together to support each other and give each other business. We got a free ride to our guesthouse and then ended up working out a price with our driver to pick us up in the morning and drive us around Angkor Wat for the day. Tanei Guesthouse was really nice and most importantly had a pool which we was more than necessary in the grueling heat of this country. We headed to Pub Street for some dinner (I had a traditional Khmer dish called Amok—a coconut curry) and some 50 cent beer. Fading quickly as we’d been up since 5am we headed back for a quick swim before heading to dreamland in our a/c rooms!