To allay some concern re the last couple of days... I am in a prehistoric internet place in Siem Reap, Cambodia... this post is dedicated to John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats and Mr E. 0f The Eels for showing us the beautiful in the tragic and the tragic in the beautiful, the ordinary in the magical and the magical in the ordinary... yes, I had music for once! Blessed protector of sanity... My battered little mp3 player actually worked for the whole bus ride yesterday instead of crashing half way through one song...
Anyway... Went to Muai Thai (Thai kickboxing) at the stadium Wednesday night, not too bad, rather chaotic... yesterday I jumped in a cab to the northern bus terminal and left Bangkok on the first bus that was going the right way, around 12.30 in the afternoon - ok there were earlier ones but I dont get up earlier unless I have to - this keyboard has no apostrophes or brackets by the way... The bus was non-eventful, about five hours to the border town of Aranyaprathet. Scenic enough if you like rice, although there were a lot of mini-garden centres, east Thailand is all about the rural stuff, so for hundreds of metres in long stretches every house is surrounded by little shrubs and plants and such that you can buy for your garden. Aranyaprathet is, as I said, a border town, which in SE Asia usually = scummy... my hotel was basic to say the least, but it was all I needed. I elected not to wander in the evening for once, primarily as I didnt want to leave my pack unattended. The next morning I rose early and headed for the border, to get there ahead of the buses and buses of Thais coming in their thousands to cross over and gamble at the casinos about 100m across the bridge... There are a million horror stories of the Thai-Cambodia border crossing including some I heard from Canadians I met in Bangkok... some of these are a bit exaggerated and some probably due to inexperienced travellers getting into trouble... I will not waffle on but I will encourage you to have a quick read of:
www.talesofasia.com/cambodia-overland-bkksr-self.htm
... this is a pretty accurate but not overstated account of what it is like, and how my morning went. Fun fun!!
I put on my sunglasses and my seriously dont mess with me face and made my way through. By coincidence I bumped into a German couple I had seen the night before on the bus and asked if they wanted to split a cab, which started off as a good idea until I realised they had already fallen for the charms of a nice young Cambodian who was "helping" them through... so we ended up getting loaded onto a "courtesy" bus that took us (via dirt track that is the road) (hey I found a key that makes brackets... not the bracket key of course) to their taxi depot... I tried to convince the other two that we should go for a walk down the "road" to find a cheaper cab but all this guys lies had them convinced and the girl clearly didn't want to be there any more (the apostrophe key is the one next to the key where the apostrophe would usually be) and from the looks on their faces I could see they didn't have the fortitude to press the issue... so I was left with the choice of getting ripped off, paying for a whole car myself, or waiting the maybe four hours until some more tourist types came across from Bangkok. I relented and we shelled out 800 baht each for the trip... after I got in a near-yelling match with the scummy guy doing the dealing... two or three times.
I have heard the ride from the border to Siem Reap compared to a scene from Mad Max, which is completely unfair. In Mad Max they have roads, and the ride here is longer than the movie. The "taxis" are in fact all nearly-destroyed Toyota Camry's with jacked-up suspension. The normal speed is around 70 up to 100km/hr on road, if you can call it that, which varies from something that possibly used to be asphalt, down to dirt with potholes of the type that would bottom a normal car and leave you stranded. Basically the 180(?) odd km is a "work in progress"... you are flanked on both sides by endless rice paddies, and every few km there is a nice new bridge which will probably, one day, be connected to the road, but until then the road diverts down a bank, across rutted dirt and potholes, back up a bank, onto the road, which is rutted dirt and potholes. Along this road are entire towns covered in thick red dust thrown up by trucks, cars, scooters and various other vehicles I have trouble describing. Picture dozens of little school children in white shirts walking home, every few seconds entirely swallowed by a wall of choking red dust. While a Camry roars past at about 80kph. Being overtaken by another Camry doing 100kph. Both of which are overtaking several scooters, with a bus coming the other way. And then of course you are belting down the road following another car, but you can't see it due to the dust, and you also can't see the metre-high concrete culvert until you hit it at about 80 and everything becomes very Dukes of Hazard.
Anyway, much fun, my neck is now, I am sorry to say, wrecked and giving me a lot of grief but should come right. I have checked into a nice... possibly even fancy by my standards... guesthouse for the night... pricey at US$22 but not really caring at this point... I am now going to find food... yet again I didn't really get the chance to eat since... um... Wednesday... and see what there is to see of the town. The continuing story of last Tuesday shall have to wait again, but I haven't forgotten, don't worry... Take care all.
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