What a flaming day!!

After 3 hours sleep, we got up to get on the bus to Cambodia. It was a minibus to the border and then a big bus from there. We knew it wasn't going to be a good journey, but we weren't expecting this!

The first bus was over 2 hours late! They said there had been an accident, but we've learnt not to believe anything they say, so who knows!! When it finally arrived, we all got on and made our way to Cambodia. The air con was pretty rubbish and the sun was blaring, so it got pretty hot on a little bus.

We had a few stops, and one final one before crossing the border. It was a little cafe, where they produced visa forms, ready for our Cambodian visas. We thought it was really nice of them as they were chatting to us and helping us to fill everything in correctly. Normally, it's a mad rush at the border, so we thought it was all very organised.

It wasn't until they asked us to pay them for the visa that we started to get suspicious. Not only was it slightly strange for a cafe to take the visa payment, but they were asking for double the fee. We started to argue with them, but they insisted that this was the only way. They would get the visa for us within 10 minutes, and you can no longer obtain visas on arrival at the border.

We went over to some of the other people on the same bus as us, and they were having the same problem. We decided collectively that we would walk to the border ourselves and see if what they were telling us was true. We asked for some money back, as we'd paid to get to Siem Reap, and we actually did pretty well out of it! It worked out that we'd only paid £2 each to get to the border!

We walked the few hundred yards, and got to border control. It was no shock to find that it was very easy to get a visa on arrival, for the correct fee!! We asked them if the forms we had filled in were ok, and they said that it was the wrong form! So we're not even convinced that the con men would have got us a real visa!!

It took a while to get through, but eventually we were in Cambodia!

It took all of 10 minutes for the next scam to begin!! We now had no transport from the border as we'd walked away from our bus! A free shuttle bus to the bus station was advertised, so we all got on. There were 7 of us in our group, so we were hoping we could get some sort of deal for a mini bus to Siem Reap.

Once we were on the shuttle bus, Paul got out the guidebook and we soon realised that we were being taken to a bus station in the middle of nowhere, that charges tourists 250% of a normal fare!! We were getting pretty fed up by this point! We'd been in the country for less than an hour, and it was already doing our heads in!!

We got dropped off, and as we expected, the fares to Siem Reap were a rip off!! We wandered around and a dodgy taxi told us that he would take us for $35. It was $13 less than they were charging inside, so we went for it! There were 4 of us in the cab, so it was only $9 each. A rip off for the country, but not bad for a 2 hour journey! Had we stayed on the bus tour, this bit would have taken 4 hours, and we just wanted to get there!

The journey was weird, a completely straight and flat road, the whole way! All of the other countries have had lots of mountains and have looked really pretty, but this was strangely flat! The road was good though and we made good time.

We were nearly there when our taxi decided to pull over. He told us he doesn't speak English and that we were to talk to the tuk tuk driver. Aargh! Why could he not just take us to the town! We were getting so frustrated!

The tuk tuk driver told us that the taxi wasn't allowed to go into the town (complete rubbish) and that he would take us from here. It was 3km away, so we didn't have much choice! He told us that it was included in the taxi fare and wouldn't cost any extra!

We told him where we wanted to go, and he told us he had already been there earlier and it was full. We were having none of it, and told him to take us there anyway! When we got there, he tried to tell us again, and said that he would take us somewhere else! Little did he know that a member of the hotel staff had come out to greet us and said that they have rooms available! He then tried to get us to book him for the next day as he had done this trip for free! We just walked away, we'd had enough!!

We were so pleased to have made it, and the hotel seemed nice and reasonably priced!!

We were knackered, so did no unpacking, just went straight out for tea! We settled on a pizza! It was much more developed than we had been expecting, and where we ate (pub street) seemed more like a European resort than Cambodia!

We had a quick look around and were a bit shocked by the prices! It seemed to be more expensive than Bangkok!