End of an "Epic" Journey

3/27

My Lonely Planet calls the journey from Bangkok to Siem Reap "epic".  If that's an epic, then I'm Odysseus and despite appearances, I am not actually an ancient Greek King.  It was actually a long, reasonably hard trip, I just thought that description was a bit extreme.  I got up at 10, went to the train station and bought my ticket (3rd class only, 48 baht- $1.50 USD) then bought a bag of steamed rice for breakfast.  I know that sounds weird, but it was really good and just exactly what I wanted so I was happy.  Since my train didn't leave until 1:05 p.m. I watched another two episodes of The Inbetweeners before heading out to get supplies for the train ride: Diet Coke, water, candied peanuts and a strange Kit-Kat-like thing and lunch at a restaurant right across the street from the train station.

The train was packed, hot and uncomfortable but I'd only be on it for, oh wait, five hours to Aranyaprathet.  Oh well.  The seats were hard, like the kind you'd find on a subway so I just got up every once in a while to make sure my limbs didn't go numb.  Mostly I worked on my beading- I'm almost done.

Eventually though, we arrived at the border town to Cambodia.  I hired a tuk tuk (a motorbike pulling a carriage) to take me to the border, then walked across the border into Poipet.  This was actually way over-complicated and a big deal because the visa was more expensive than it should have been, the border guard was super creepy and it was basically a miserable time.  I met up with an American couple who had been way WAY overcharged for a cab to Siem Reap; they should have paid $12 per person maximum but had paid $25 each, so basically they let me join them and I only had to pay $3.  We had to take a shuttle bus to get to the taxi station, then wait for a taxi, then wait for them to get gas.  Two hours later we arrived in the town of Siem Reap but for whatever reason the taxi wouldn't take us to our hotels, they had prepaid tuk tuks take us.  Finally, at about 9:30 at night I got to my hostel, Garden Village.  I didn't have a reservation so I had to accept their seemingly sketchy dorm option (normally I think dorms are fine, just this one was sketchy) though it ended up being fine and it only cost $1.  For the next night though, I moved into a single for $3.

All in all I'd traveled through three real sized countries, unlike some of the baby countries in Europe (cough, Benelux, cough) in 30 hours so I crashed into bed.