Three wolves™

If you’ve read the Cambodian lonely planet, and travelled the road by bus from Bangkok to anywhere in Cambodia, you’ll probably know about the ’scam bus’.

It involves tour compaines touting prices of 200 baht ($10NZ) or less to take you over the border, and it’s one of those “too good to be true” things. Basically they drag the bus trip out from about 7 hours to a 12 hour + trip, stop you off at their connected restaurants and markets, jib you on the visa price, and then dump you at the border with no connecting bus. If there is a connecting bus, they will make sure you get to a guest house of their choosing very very late at night so you don’t have any other choice but to stay there. We were having none of that - or so we thought!

From Chaing Mai in the north, we booked our trip through our guest house, made sure the bus would take us all the way through to Siem Reap in Cambodia, and paid 650 baht for the privelage. We arrived at the bus station in Bangkok at 6:55 to catch our bus at 7, and were informed by the extremely unhelpful staff that the bus had left at 6:30 and we would have to catch the 8am one. A bit of a pain, but not all that bad. The bus arrived at 8 as stated, and it looked pretty plush. After a bit of messing around trying to make sure everything was in order and bags on the right bus, we got on. It was pretty packed but quite comfy and had air con too, so we settled in for the journey.

All was going well if you don’t include the passing on blind corners and gereral erratic state of the bus drivers manoevurs to pass traffic that was getting in his way, and we neared the Thailand/Cambodia border with about 8km to go. Here was where things started to turn bad…

The bus pulled to a halt outside some roadside restaurant, and our group plus a few others were told to get off the bus as they were “transferring” us to another bus. The reason they gave is because we booked with a different tour company - true, i thought and so had no reason to be worried. We got ma bit to eat at this place and as we did the bus people handed out some Cambodian visa forms for us to sign. We filled these out, and then were told that the price was 1300 baht for the visa (300 more than we were quoted) and they wanted us to pay in baht rather than the standard US$. We reluctantly agreed, but I had a good go at the guy for overcharging us and pointed out the price in the lonely planet and the full page article on the scam bus, but he was very smooth and gave a politicians answer to every question I asked - successfully dodging the question and babbling a whole lot of jargon till I was just like “whatever mate…”.

After we had filled in the forms and handed over our passports (gulp!), we jumped in a taxi-ute and headed to the border - or so we thought! We stopped outside a market, and one of our hosts ran off down the road with our passports, for all we knew never to be seen again!! Visions of being stuck in a foreign country with no way to get out crossed my mind, but i put them to one side and got a grip. We all sat in the back of this ute, about 25 of us, and waited for something to happen. The other host was sitting outside the market calling people on his fone, and in a lull btween calls, I called out him if he could tell me what was going on. He explained that the other guy had gone down to the camboidian consulate to get our visas for us, and would be back in 10 minutes. Sounded fair enough, and when I looked around I could actually see the signs for the consulate down the road. Things were starting to add up, and the tension eased between our groiu somewhat, but still - we were all sure you could get visas at the border.

So the other guy comes back, and we head on through the border. We all get through with no hassels at all, and pop out the other side with passports back in hand and a 30 day visa to boot. All good, or so it seemed…

While in arrivals, I rang our guest house in siem reap to confirm our booking, and also explained our adventues on the bus so far. He confimed our suspicions that we were indeed on the scam bus, and that there would be no connecting bus waiting for us. He was right - our hosts told us that the bus “was late”, and wouldn’t arrive at the border to take us to siem reap till 5pm - convienitely getting us there at around 12am!! My man on the fone told me not to go any further with the bus people and rather just get a taxi to siem reap. Sure, it would cost us $40Us, but at least we’d arrive there in good time. He actually rang the taxi company for me and booked a car, and after some mixed conversations where we both got lost in translation, and guy came up to us with my name (spelled ‘Cameroon’!! hehe) on a bit of paper and a waiting taxi. After some haggling over price, we all jumped in for the most interesting car ride we’ve ever had!

We made it to siem reap in one sore piece, but it’s worth telling to story of the taxi ride there, but that will have to wait till next post as I’ve been in this internet cafe too long and I can feel the stickyness of a thousand other net surfers hands from my keyboard and I just really want to go a wash my hands!

Trip update: We are actually now in Sihanoukeville which is on the south coast of Cambodia. We have spent the day in the sun getting completely roasted (thanks to the malaria drugs we’re taking!). The water is very warm, and the beaches are nice, and i have managed to get a pedicure and foot scrub, haha!! Actually, it’s really good, and cheap (About NZ$7) and, I hate to say it, get my back waxed!!! All while lying on the beach (mite explain my massive sunburn tan…). Actually, it wasn’t a wax - they used cotton thread and this crazy technique of drawing the cotton over your skin, and something to do with the way they fold the cotton, it pulls out your hairs! So there you go girls, no need to use wax anymore…

Up next: The taxi ride to Siem Reap, which I have affectionaly dubbed “The NASA recruitement programe”