Don't Fear the Siem Reaper

At 5:55am, March 11, I boarded the train from Bangkok to the border town of Aranyaprathet where I would cross into Cambodia. I had read online to watch out for scams at the border.  From the train station, tuk-tuk drivers will take you to a building where you can pay a hefty sum of money to fill out your visa application.  Or you can do what I did, and what you should do, is if they drop you off at this building, avoid it altogether and walk to the actual border and exit Thai immigration. Once you've gone through Thai immigration, it is then that you pay $20 for your Cambodian visa at the official Cambodian office.

I found myself going through customs with two Australians, a man and a woman in their forties. They were very friendly and together we figured out going through the procedures together. After crossing into the Cambodian border town of Poipet, I ended up in a minibus with them and six other foreign travelers. I really liked everyone in the minibus, but man did some of them complain. When we had to wait about 15 minutes for the minibus to come, when it ended up being around $2 more than we were promised to take the minibus, when the air conditioning didn't work, complain, complain, complain. I would find this to be a reoccurring theme in my travels where I would meet some really cool foreign travelers and then would find myself grow increasingly more irritated by as they complained about every little thing. At one point the Australian lady expressed her dislike of Cambodians, "the whole lot of them." We had barely been in Cambodia an hour and had only dealt with immigration officials, ticket sellers, and bus drivers, that's hardly a representation of an entire country's populace.

Besides that though, the minibus ride was fine and I arrived in Siem Reap in mostly good spirits. I stayed at the Garden Village Hostel where I got a single room in a bamboo hut for $3 a night. Not a bad deal. The next day I hired a tuk-tuk driver to visit some temples. Since I'd been to Siem Reap before I had seen Angkor Wat and all the main temples. So I tried to see some less visited temples. I visited Banteay Samre and a few other temples and realized I had seen them all before. Oh well. I spent the rest of the day hanging around Siem Reap eating food and getting fish foot massages (where you put your feet in a tank of water and fish eat the dead skin off it).

For me, being in Siem Reap and visiting the temples elicited the same feeling I experience when I watch an engaging film in a room full of people having loud conversations or talking on cell phones. Lots of charm surrounded by lots of noise. It's a nice town infested with tourists.

Tourists aren't necessarily bad though. I did meet some cool people. That night I hung out with a Cambodian staff member of the hostel and we played a game of pool against two German travelers. I later ended up having some beers with them and two other Swedish travelers. They had been in Siem Reap for a while and had some interesting insights. During our game of pool one of the German guys leaned next to me and told me to pay attention to how the Cambodian staff members played pool. They were incredible players but would always perform badly at the end of the game because it would be rude to beat guests. We all ended up going out to Pub Street later in the night, the main hub of Siem Reap nightlife, but by that time I was pretty tired and I had to catch a bus early the next morning for Pnomh Penh so I didn't stay out too late. Siem Reap had been good but I was looking forward to getting to Pnhomh Penh where I would meet my friend and fellow KBC bandmate Nate Klink and hopefully stray some from the tourists spots.

The Farang Way

When I arrived in Bangkok during the weekend of elections therefore so establishments weren't serving alcohol. Little drinking occurred in those first couple of days but there was lots of city exploration. Haven and I took a ferry down the river and walked around back-alleyways. One night we even ended up hanging out with some Vietnamese people who had been living in Thailand for awhile. It was a funny interaction with Haven speaking broken Thai and me trying to remember Vietnamese.

On Tuesday we caught a minibus to the coastal city of Sri Racha and from there took a ferry to the island of Koh Si Chang. Ko Si Chang is a small, quiet, and beautiful island. There's no nightlife to speak of but that was fine with me. The landscape is incredible, the people are very friendly, and there are few farangs (foreigners). Haven and I spent most of our time eating awesome food and riding on motorbikes shooting videos (Haven was also a film major).

Haven's former English teaching partner/roommate and fellow Goshenite, Julian works at a resort on the island along with his girlfriend Vaughn. Julian was gone most of the time we were there but he returned on our last day on the island. He showed us around the resort where he works. It's an amazing secluded place with bungalows, zip-lines, cave exploration, and cliff jumping. And it's nearly empty. We saw very few guests there which was honestly nice for me but probably bad for business. Part of Julian and Vaughn's work at the resort is to help promotion and marketing so maybe soon it will be less vacant.

The only sore spot about the island is that it's surrounded by what appears to be one hundred or more huge cargo ships. It gives the island a somewhat erie feeling. It's tropical paradise engulfed by monstrous industrial machines. At night when the ships' lights are on it seems like the island is in a constant threat of siege.

Haven and I took a bus back to Bangkok. My last night in Bangkok was spent on Khaosan Road, known as the "backpacker ghetto". The street is filled with cheap accommodations and lots of pubs. I wanted to experience it just once because it seemed like a backpacker hub I should at least know about.  It's basically a bunch of street vendors, some young, hip Thai people, some beggars, and a butt-load of drunk farangs running into each other and creating sometimes interesting and sometimes painful (and many times both) interactions.  I did talk to a lot of cool people that night but I was happy when I finally escaped the madness.

This next morning I left Bangkok for Cambodia via train. It was great hanging out with Haven in Thailand. I'll be seeing him again in little over a week when we embark on a motorbike trip in Northern Vietnam.