Siem Reap Hotels
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One year on the road
Entry 142 of 142 | show all | print this entry |
After doing my homework, I woke up at 5:30am Monday morning prepared to haggle my way across the border and dodge every possible scam. While the bus ride to the border town was uneventful, the scam attempts started on the tuk-tuk ride to the border. The tuk-tuk driver attempted to take the two Canadian girls I met on the bus and me to the Cambodian Embassy in the border town of Aranyaprathet instead of to the actual border, complete with a tout there to meet us and tell us that we had to get our visas there and that we couldn't get them at the border. We knew he was full of crap and refused to get out of the tuk-tuk until we were brought to the border.
Checking out of Thailand was easy, simply wait in line and get stamped. Then we walked to the Cambodian side of the border and went over to the visa processing window. This was where I was prepared for the biggest attempt at scamming. The official working at the visa desk insisted that the visa did not just cost the 20 USD as is written on the sign, but instead cost 20 USD plus 1000 Thai Baht (about 13 USD). Also a load of crap. When I insisted that the visa only costs 20 USD, he claimed that that was for a 3-day wait. Obviously, another load of crap. There's no way they would have a policy to make people wait three days while sitting at the border. Just plain dumb. So I insisted some more that it was only 20 USD, all while handing him my passport, completed visa application, and crisp twenty dollar bill. He got a nasty look on his face, scrutinized every letter I had written on the visa application (even making me correct a couple of words that he deemed difficult to read), glared at me some more, put my passport and application in the pile to be processed, and took each of the Canadian girls' passports, applications, and 20 USD. Shockingly enough, in Cambodian terms 3 days of waiting actually equates to about 15 minutes. Who would have known?
With our visas freshly stuck into our passports we headed over to the border guard to get stamped into Cambodia - a very easy process. Then it was on to find our transport to Siem Reap (about a 3 hour drive away). Knowing that finding a non-mafia/government taxi would be difficult and that a bus would be a long wait, we headed with the mafia tout to the mafia taxi center. There he told us that it would be $15/person for a cab and that we'd have to wait for a fourth person to arrive. Not knowing how long that would take, we talked our way into a $55 cab ride for the three of us (I had read online that it should cost $45-60 for the whole cab, so didn't feel scammed by this price). But once the price was agreed upon, we were told we'd have to pay upfront. I gave that a big hell no and said we'd pay when we arrived in Siem Reap. They insisted we couldn't do that, so we picked up our stuff and headed out the door, saying we'd find another cab and ignoring the touts yells that we'd be arrested if we took a different cab. Shockingly enough, we only managed to walk about 3 minutes down the road before our friendly tout appeared in the passenger seat of a cab ready to drive us to Siem Reap and collect his pay on arrival. So we jumped in and headed on our way.
Our cab driver was great. He drove at a good pace, but safely (a rare occurrence in this part of the world), and was really friendly. The road wasn't in great condition, but it wasn't anywhere near the worst I've ridden on during this trip. At one point we reached an impasse. While we're not exactly sure what happened, it appeared that part of the road had fallen away and that a truck was stuck on the other part. Our Toyota Camry cab turned into an off-road vehicle, following a line of cars through the field to the side of the road. We had a bit of trouble getting up the hill to get back onto the road, but we made it and continued on toward town.
On the outskirts of town, our driver told us that he was late to get back and would drop us off for his friend to take in a tuk-tuk into town for free. Knowing that passing off to a tuk-tuk driver was one of the scams, we insisted on staying in the cab. Our driver was visibly upset, with beads of sweat starting to form on his forehead. He once again pulled over at another grouping of tuk-tuks. We said okay, we'd get in the tuk-tuk, but no money until we were at the intersection we had agreed upon (we didn't want to be sold to a guest house for commission, so we picked a random intersection in the middle of town and said we were meeting a friend there). We were taken to the intersection and managed to convince the driver to leave, though ready to go give a random white guy a hug and pretend we knew him if the driver didn't skedaddle on his own. In all, I'd say my border crossing experience was painless and scam-free, but I was definitely glad to be prepared.
I was exhausted from the long day of travel so I decided to give myself a rest day before heading to Angkor Wat. I originally planned on visiting the Landmine Museum, but when I learned that they moved it almost 40 km outside of town and it would now cost $20 for a ride there and back, I decided to skip it and just hang around town. I hoped that during the day I would meet someone else going to Angkor Wat the next day who would want to split a tuk-tuk with me, but no such luck. Instead I got advice from a couple of people about which temples to see in what order since they had already been.
Knowing my distaste for early mornings, I decided that waking up for the sunrise was not in the cards for me and instead started my day at 8:30am. I met my tuk-tuk driver out front and headed over to the ruins. Angkor Wat is actually just one of a huge complex of temple ruins from the Angkorian period of the 9th-15th centuries CE. The temples were all essentially built by the kings to honor themselves and their families, and also as religious monuments (I'm sure google can help you find a very detailed history of each temple if you so desire). Most of them have essentially deteriorated to piles of rubble by now, but some very impressive ones are still standing. It would take days to visit all the different temples and I know my threshold for ancient ruins doesn't typically last for days on end, so I decided to fit all the major temples into one day and consider that my Angkor experience.
My favorites were Bayon, Ta Prohm, and Angkor Wat. Bayon is distinctive because of the 200 or so large faces sticking up on towers all over the site. The faces are all slightly different and if you look closely you can even see differences between the left and right sides of each face since different people carved each side. Ta Prohm is a bit more rugged than some of the others and even has massive trees growing out of the temple. It's almost maze-like in the different paths you can take to explore. According to the little handout, Ta Prohm was used in filming the movie Tomb Raider, but I've never seen it. Then there's the big dog, Angkor Wat. It's definitely as impressive as it's made out to be. Even though I had seen hundreds of pictures of the large spires sticking out into the sky, I wasn't quite prepared for exactly what I'd see there. From afar, it looks as though it's in perfect condition. Inside you can see that it's deteriorating a bit, but has been restored really well and is in great shape. I took tons of pictures of all the temples that I'll eventually post here.
I finished up the day joining the hoards of tourists climbing to the top of the hill to watch the sunset from Phnom Bakheng. I was a bit disappointed that the hill is in the wrong location to watch the sun set over Angkor Wat and that the sunset that evening was pretty lame. Oh well. It was a great day overall and these are definitely near the top of the list of ancient rock collections (aka ruins) I've visited on this trip.
Next stop - the Cambodian capital - Phnom Penh.
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![[14] Angkor Wat](/travel-photo/el_condor/asia_2005/1132888980/x_051.jpg/tpod.html "[14] Angkor Wat")
