April 4
Today we were awakened by a violent thunderstorm outside our
hotel and that led to us being ready for an early morning wake up call. We are heading out to Cambodia and have to be
fed, packed and ready for the minibus at 7:45am. We do all of the above and are ready to walk
out when the driver beckons. We follow
him up Khaosan Road and then back down Khaosan Road, through some small
alleyways and out the other side to streets we have never seen before. We are soon picked up by a minivan and we all
pile in along with a guy we meet named Song who is from Belgium and has been
travelling now for 20 months. It seems
to take nearly forever to just get out of Bangkok, but we keep on trucking and
soon are on a very bumpy highway. We
stop a couple times for snacks and potty breaks and arrive about 3 hours later
at what looks like a pit stop on the side of the road. We have been pre-warned about attempts to
sell us visas into Cambodia at inflated prices so we are prepared when they ask
us to get out of the bus and take a seat at a table. They do the whole song and dance about
expediting our visas, they can’t guarantee that the bus will wait for us if it
takes us too long to get through customs, yada yada yada. We keep repeating that we will get our visa
at the border and so they pile us back into the minivan we have just unpacked
from and we go about a quarter mile down the road to a stopping point where we
are told to get our bags and start walking to the border. Our bus driver takes a different route and
says he will meet us on the other side.
We first get through Thai customs to depart the country and then
approach the border with Cambodia. We
keep being told which way to turn and soon enough arrive at the customs’ house
of Cambodia. They are all very nice and
totally efficient as we give them our filled out customs’ cards and some US
cash and soon we have our Visas in hand.
We then go through immigration and out to a waiting area for our bus. We all pile into a “Free Shuttle” bus and are
driven about 15 minutes outside of town.
Once there, we again unpack our bags and it is suggested that we might
want to spend a little more than our bus fare on a private taxi cab. Once we learn that the bus, for which we have
already paid, will take between 5-6 more hours, we conclude that the extra $30
is well worth it to cut our trip in half.
One problemo, we are five people and they are just fine with us packing into a small sedan, be I don’t
think my lap can stand 3 hours of Sam sitting on it, so….. We come up with an
alternative. We have a few others that
arrived at the terminal at the same time as us and we agree to split up into
two cars of four people each. Annie and
I are paired with a really nice couple from Adelaide, Australia. They are the most interesting pair and are
travelling for over two years. This is
not their first rodeo and they entertain us with tales of their many travel over
the years….from two years spent in Japan to 6 months in China and a lot of
other places in between. We have a
really nice conversation that makes the time go by that much faster. Once we arrive in the town of Siem Reap, the
driver has some trouble finding their hotel and even more finding ours. We finally arrive at the Rithy Rine Angkor
Hotel and are greeted by Paulie who has already settled into our rooms. To the uninitiated, Cambodia appears like a
dusty, dirty, impoverished place where bare-footed old women push impossibly
heaving carts through the streets and very small children are desperate for a
few coins for food. Once you get past
the shock of the shanty shacks and the grime that covers nearly every inch of
the country, you discover some of the loveliest people on the planet. We get unpacked and decide to default to
eating at the hotel restaurant which turns out to be a wonderful idea. Our meal is great and we are the only ones
eating at the restaurant that is overlooking the infinity pool. Our waiter is funny and keeps peeking at us
from behind a plant to make sure we enjoy every bite. After we are finished, he brings us a
complimentary fruit plate. The hotel recalls a bygone era with its wide
stairwell and its wood interiors. Each
of the rooms has its own balcony overlooking to the pool. We are so pleased to be here and to settle in
for what we hope will be a restful night.
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