Overland to Cambodia

We have arrived in Siem Reap. The couple of days back from Koh Samet were pretty busy and stressful. Our plans for Chiang Mai and Laos were killed by flash flooding and landslides. I was up and dressed by 6am and we tidied up the room and got a cab to the Northern Bus terminal in Bangkok.

We caught the 7:30 am bus, which got to the border at around 1 in the afternoon. Thai side was pretty straightforward, cambodia side is defined by end of tarseal and people pulling carts, and madness. Poipet is the Cambodian border town infamous for casinos and massage parlours for dodgy Thais who want to partake in a bit of entertainment illegal in Thailand. It’s not recommended to stay there after dark, but we made it through in an hour or so, nearly got scammed despite our best efforts and wound up getting lost in the middle of it.

There are no street signs, well no streets actually, just dusty, dirty tracks with all manner of bikes, cars and trucks barrelling down between tiny shacks bursting with dirty kids and shouting mums. The Khmers were actually far nicer people than their hometown, and we managed to get directions to the bus terminal despite language difficulties.

Here we took a Taxi for US$50 to Siem Reap. It’s a 155km journey, but it took around 5 hours. All, and I mean all, the cars and taxis here are Toyota Camry’s. The taxi’s are slightly modified with higher suspension to deal with the roads. Oh my dear lord, the roads.

The reason why we considered flying in, was to avoid the border crossing and road trip altogether, but instead we did go overland due to the saving.

The road to Poipet is listed in the Lonely Planet for Cambodia as the worst single stretch of road in Asia. We travelled the road in the worst state is has been in in 5 years, during a thunderstorm, with torrential rain, at night. After 2 flat tyres, and 1 puncture plus a couple of stops to tape the boot down, wash the headlights clean, and to pick up a live chicken which joined megan in the backseat (but would be joining the taxi driver for dinner) we finally arrived at Siem Reap. I think the trip took about 5 hours, maybe 6 my brain had been vibrated to a liquid state by then.

I don’t really know how to describe the road and it’s potholes. They varied from deep to shallow, tiny to the size of a car, sometimes we had to drive off the road just to get through. One constant though, is that they were constant, there was no avoiding them. There was more potholes  than road. We drove over bridges made of sagging steel cages that look like they were erected by US troops during the war and have just been left behind. Little naked kids jumped from these into the water.

Our driver was a young Khmer, very friendly and quietly spoken. He had a lot of patience, and to drive 10 hours on those roads every day he must be a little mad. Actually thats probably unfair, he needs to earn a living, and this is one way of doing it. He said his car suffers severe mechanical failure to the suspension and drivetrain about every 3 days, and after what the car endured on our trip i have no doubt. In fact everytime we smashed through pothole I glanced in the mirror expecting to see the wheel and suspension arm left behind.

It was a pretty amazing trip, the views out in the flat Cambodian plains of deep rich green were beautiful. The looming clouds and forks of lighting on the horizon where dramatic, and the oxen carts, tiny temples and people soaked in the rain riding on backs of trucks and tractors (but all seeing to be happy as it was very warm) felt like shots out of a National Geographic (I couldn’t take any pictures though, it was too bumpy, too bumpy in fact to read the lonely planet to pick a guest house).

At one point we got to a small town where the taxi’s stop to get their cars checked for damage. 2 little girls came over and started talking to us (where are you from, how old are you) by the second question I could tell that they weren’t listening, they just rolled out phrases trying to engage you enough before asking for money. They stopped looking at us and where sizing up other potentional targets, but still kept with the questions. They gave us wristbands as a gift, and then tried to sell us postcards for around $10 (shitloads) I said we didn’t need any because we didn’t have any friends to send them to. Then they asked for a coin from England (despite they fact I told them I was from NZ). I said I didn’t have any, we only had US$20 notes and some small thai change. I felt sorry for them, and they were trying to sell as opposed to beg or steal so we gave them 5 baht, not much, but a fair amount to make from every tourist you encounter. As we drove off, one waved bye, whilst the other pointed at me and made the ‘slit throat’ gesture. Obviously she didn’t like the fact that I gave the money to the other girl.

So here we are in Siem Reap, it seems like a pretty interesting place. Cambodia is definately not Thailand, there are the bad things (it’s dirtier, more polluted in the cities, more beggars, some of the food at the markets actually smells like rotting flesh, more chaotic), but there are the good things too (it feels more exotic, the Khmers so far have been as friendly, calm, and graceful as the Thais, and despite the desperation of their lives, they actually have  great sense of humor). On our walk this morning we met a tuk-tuk driver who wanted to take us around. He had a bright pink carriage, with a vase full of giant plastic flowers glued to the front), he was creative, but he was also taking the piss somewhat. We had a laugh and I took his business card in the event that we made need a tuk-tuk somewhere. The guest house will organise our trips to Angkor, it feels really bad letting people down by not being able to use their service, but there’s not much we can do. The taxi driver was also keen to take us to the temples, but taxis are better for larger groups as they cost more, whereas a tuk-tuk can take 2 people for much less. I have resigned myself to the fact that the taxi driver knows this and isn’t going to really expect me to call him up - i hope.

So the temples will be explored along with the city for the next 4 days or so. Then we plan to head to battambang around the lake, by travelling in a boat. We expect to stay there for a couple of days before heading to Phnom Penh. I’m not sure how long we will spend there, probably only 2 or 3 nights. We then will likely continue south to the coast to Sihounikeville before following the coast back to Thailand, through a much nicer border crossing at Koh Chang. In many ways now Thailand and Bangkok feels a little like home. It is familiar, with people we know, a language we can just about understand and a currency we can think in terms of now.