At this early stage of the day I was concentrated on the journey ahead. A relaxing 6 hour drive to siem reap using the nice newly built road that had been finished just weeks ago and an allegedly easy crossing at the border.
But how wrong I was.
As soon as we were off the boat we were taken to an 'office' selling sandwiches and were told to fill out visa forms, hand over passports and pay $40. And the scams begin.
He took is to the border, we walked right through and the visas were processed. We then realise a nice $5 from the $40 went straight into his pocket. It was then only when we were in Cambodia that we realised we were not taking a nice minibus on the new road. We had been scammed. We were sold normal bus tickets and this meant the bus was firstly travelling for 10 hours down to Phnom Penh before heading back up to siem reap, which would have taken another 6 or 7. It's quite a shock finding this out when you expected something very different. I was mostly annoyed about how I bought the ticket from the man who ran the bungalows I was staying in and he ending up just a lier and cheater.
So once I realised there was nothing I could do, I got to work changing my plan. And despite the trickery, it may have been a blessing in disguise. I decided to get off at Phnom Penh and head south to the islands before heading up to siem reap which makes my journey to Bangkok to meet Edward a lot easier.
Driving through Cambodia has allowed me to see a lot of the country already and it is beautiful. The locals live in wooden houses on stilts but the houses have tiled roofs. Something I haven't seen before. The people were smiling and waving as we drove by and I even managed to watch a lovely sunset.
What a day of ups and downs!
Hey Felicity it was exactly like that 9 years ago. I needed to pay 30 US $ dont worry you made the best out of situation :)
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