Day 1....
Well we were up at 4:30, clocked out by 5 and at Hua Lamphong station by 5:30, ready to leave Bangkok at 5:55.... Me and Lee are not the most punctual of people but, as there's only 2 trains running and the 2nd arrives at Poipet when the border is closed, we had to make sure we were on time. The train journey was ok. We were sat with a Thai man who looked about 20 and it turned out he was 39! (I tried to take a pic of him to show every1) and Cheng Chi, a 79 year old, Chinese man who's dad had brought the family to Thailand when he was a child! He was a really nice man! They got off 2 hours into the journey.
We didn't take food on the train, basically coz I didn't know what to take, Everything in the shop is super noodles or coissants with hot dog sausages in the middle, so we were hungry by 11am and ordered off the train. It was a bag of boiled rice with 2 strips of hard meat attached... I ate a mouthful of the flavourless rice and passed it to Lee. Lee enjoyed the meat i had a bite of that too but i haven't the foggiest what animal it was?! When we arrived at aranprathaya station (6 and a half hours later) we got a tuk tuk for 40bahts to the Cambodian border. The tuk tuk driver actually took us to a place a 100 yards from the border were you are to fill out your details then pay 1200 bahts. Our hostel in Cambodia had warned us about this! It's a scam, even though there are police outside and a sign in the road saying Cambodian border, it's a scam. It seemed so official! I had started filling in the form, Lee had passport pics done (200bahts) when Lee remembered the email. I read it to the other travellers too and we all got up and left!
The queue was pretty long and slow going over the border. In total it took 4 hours! This included the 1st queue for getting your departure ticket checked, the 2nd queue to get your visa and finally the queue to get your arrival form stamped.
There are no signs so after the 1st queue we missed the visa part and went straight to the arrival part, queued then got sent away. We asked at the information point where we should go before getting our arrival ticket stamped and they said 'give us 1,000 bahts and we will sort it for you'. Seriously?! It's the information point! Lee looked like he was about to pass out at this point, or turn into the incredible hulk, his face was twitching and everything - i took a pic but he made me delete it later on when I showed him. We asked some English speaking travellers what to do, that's when we found out about the visa queue. To get your visa it's 20usd pp plus 100 bahts if you want it doing now - basically another scam from an actual police officer. They pointed at the passports, they'd setup, through the window and said if you want us to do your visa now pay us if not 48 hours because we are very busy! They say this with fellow officers laughing- FUMIN at the number of scams going on. We ended up paying 45usd for the 2 visas then queued again for the arrival stamp. We arrived over the border just after 4pm!
The hostel had warned us of another scam once over the border were the buses and tuk tuk take you outside of Siem Reap to their friends shop then asks for more money to take you any further... so we got a taxi for 40usd, which seemed like loads at the time but it turns out Siem reap is over an hour away!
The taxi rang ahead to our hostel to get directions. I was a little weary so I asked could I use his phone and ring too. I thought it would be his friend on the phone pretending to be our hostel but it wasn't. We hadn't given anyone any of our details and the man on the phone confirmed my name! The taxi driver was genuine! He told us what food to try and to go to Angkor Wat at 5am to see the sunrise. He showed us his house as we drove past it which was a man made house, in fact he said he was building it bit by bit. I don't want to say it was a shack because in comparison to other homes we'd seen on the way it wasn't. He told us that if you want to buy a house or a car in Cambodia you have to pay upfront. He bought the land 1st now he is building his house.... So if your crossing the border to Cambodia look out for Leeda the taxi driver!
When we got to our 1st guesthouse of Cambodia in Siem Reap we were met by Hak. He gave us a warm welcome then told us we had to stay at his sisters guest house down the road for the night (this is going to be a common theme I think) so we got a free tuk tuk to Chinns guest house and got a warm welcome here too. It's more like a hotel. We have our own room and bathroom.
After we put our stuff in the room we went for food! We tried a fish amok, as suggested by Leeda, and it was positively delightful. I bought some Ray bans from the night market for 5usd then we went back to the guesthouse to sleep. It's been a long day so we'll report some more on Siem Reap tomorrow.