We entered Thailand on a sixty day tourist visa that was going to expire on December 29, as such, we had to leave the country to renew it. Rather than just do a quick out and in trip, we chose to visit Siem Reap, Cambodia where we'll celebrate the New Year and my birthday. We decided it would be fun to do a little "slow travel" so, instead of flying out of Bangkok, we went overland. We left Bangkok by train this morning at 6:00 for the border town of Aranyaprathet. This first leg of the journey covered 257 kilometers and should have taken about 5 hours to complete. Of course, that's Thai time. Total fare for the two of us was 96 Baht, about $3.47 CDN. There's no first class on the train, no dining car and no air conditioning. You can, however open the windows to let the air flow through the wagons. The cars are pretty bare bones, relics from an earlier, simpler time. The train stops at every little station along the way and, at the larger ones, street vendors walk the length of the train crying out the details of the goodies they sell to the passengers through the open windows. Who needs a dining car? The train slowly clickety-clacked its way through the Thai countryside, finally arriving at Aranyaprathet at 12:30 PM, right on (Thai) time. We disembarked , dusted ourselves off and grabbed an 80 Baht tuk-tuk, driven by the Thai equivalent of Michael Schumacher, to the Cambodian border at Poi-Pet. There was a long line of people leaving the country at the Thai border, but it moved fairly quickly. Once out of Thailand we had to procure visas to enter into Cambodia. That proved to be a fairly rapid and painless process. But then we had to queue up at the Cambodian border to have our passports stamped and our photographs and fingerprints taken. Next, we walk to a free shuttle that takes us for a 10 minute ride from the border to the bus station. Unfortunately, we had to wait 30 minutes for the shuttle to depart. In the end, by the time we embarked on the final 152 kilometer leg of our trek, it was just after 3:00 PM! We weren't 5 minutes into the journey when the driver pulled to the side of the road to pick up some cargo, hundreds of rolled up woven mats that filled every nook, cranny and available seat on the bus. The heavily trafficked highway to Siem Reap is only two lanes, with many slow moving vehicles, which means a lot of overtaking. Each time our driver pulled into the oncoming lane he'd stand on the horn to announce his presence to the truck being passed and to the kid on the scooter caught in the headlights. The constant honking was not only a little harrowing, it distracted me from the new Jack Reacher novel I was reading. Insert noise canceling headphones into ears, press play, problem solved. At just after 6:00 PM the driver turned right onto a washboard like dirt road, parked next to several other buses and got off. None of the passengers moved. About 5 minutes later, the driver climbed back into the bus and, as if addressing a collection of morons, said, "Last stop". As we stepped down from the bus we were accosted by tuk tuk drivers quick to scam unsuspecting newcomers to the city. No one had any idea where we were which eliminated any idea of walking to our hotel. To make matters worse, I discovered that my Thai SIM card doesn't work in Cambodia so Google maps couldn't update. Fortunately, a very nice young Chinese tourist negotiated a reasonable ride into town and invited us to join him. At 7:00 PM we finally arrived at our hotel, tired, dusty, thirsty and hungry. A quick shower, a bottle of water and a mad dash to the nearest restaurant and then we were ready to call it a day. Slow travel, indeed.