De-Dredlocked and Onto Cambodia

Location: Saigon
Weather: Very warm

After much hesitation our next planned stop was decided on - Angkor Wat - the famous ancient temples of Cambodia - near the town of Siem Reap. After finding all the flights from Vientiane to Siem Reap booked out for weeks, I discovered the only ways to get there was either a nightmare 24+ hour bus journey south or to go back to Bangkok and then take the bus to Siem Reap - this sounded much easier as the roads are 100% better.
After a big night out with Laura and Charlotte at a very posh French restaurant, costings us a staggering $10 a head, Dom left. This was a day before me, but he wanted to sort some stuff out in Bangkok and I couldn't go as I had to wait for my visa to Vietnam. After another big night out at another very nice restaurant with Laura, Charlotte, Neeheet and Bas(a Dutch dude we met in Phonsavan) - Laura & Charlotte decided something had to be done with my hair - so they spent from midnight till 3am de-dredlocking me!! I am grateful beyond reason - Laura - you are a true star.

By The Bar On The Night Out With Laura, Charlotte, Neeheet & Bas
After 4 hours sleep, I went to the Vietnam embassy at 8am and all the man did was take out the papers I'd filled in 2 days before, take out a visa from his drawer, laminate a date on it and stick it in my passport. It took 2 minutes for him to do this - why they make us wait 3 days I don't know and it's a total rip-off in Vientiane as it costs $55 as opposed to $25 in Phnom Penh, which the rubbish Rough Guide nor Lonely Planet mention.

After considering many options, I eventually got back to Bangkok by taking the most convoluted route possible. After 3 tuk-tuks, a public bus, a plane from Udonthani Airport which cost me about 12quid and an airport bus I made it to Ko San Road and met up with Dom again.

At 7am the next morning we got the bus to Siem Reap. Dom had a slightly different ticket to me, which meant his bus was much nicer, my bus looked about 50 years old and rather unsurprisingly broke down(the gearbox or clutch went) about 30mins from the border!! after 2 minibuses finally turned up, we were taken to the border crossing - here total chaos ensued. I doubt there are many places such as Aranyaprathet / Poipet border - hundreds of random people doing random things, tons of begging/stealing kids, motorbikes with trailors laden with cement or rice piled as high as houses with people sitting on top of the mound. We were escorted across by a man from our bus who welcomed us to Cambodia by ripping us off for 20Baht for a useless bit of paper, this was in-cahoots with the Cambodian border guards. Even more chaos ensued when they put various groups of us onto different buses and even funnier Dom and I ended up on the same bus somehow.
Now, the famous part, legendary to backpackers - the road from Poipet to Siem Reap - stories such as French airlines paying to have this road broken up and other airlines paying the Cambodian government NOT to tarmac it are numerous and from my view true. The road was semi-covered, but so rough that you bounced along like on some kind of fairground ride, also so much red dust got kicked up that the bus's air-conditioning brought in the dust and you could see particles inside the bus when car headlights shone on us. Even better some of the bridges on the road were down so we often had to take detours off-road and back. To top this off, the bus stopped at a restaurant and whilst we consumed noodles costing an extortionate 7000kip for dinner, the driver changed one tyre because it was flat. Another hour on the road and another tyre burst! so we all had to get out in the pitch darkness and wait for yet another bus. At least the guesthouse we were all forced to stay at - the Sak San - was good.

I slept well that night, maybe it was the long day, the journey or maybe that tablet of Valium I bought in Laos, but I was out cold for a full 8 hours!

So, the reason for being in Siem Reap was Angkor Wat. I ended up spending 3 days exploring the various temples - Angkor Thom, Phnom Bakheng, Preah Khan, Banteay Srei, the ancient Roulous Group and the most famous Angkor Wat - I saw sunrise and sunset there! I am very glad to have seen just about every temple of Angkor and it was fun riding around on the back of a motorbike (foreigners aren't allowed to ride motorbikes themselves in Angkor) and most of them are quite stunning & very interesting, but I was a little bit templed out by the end, although seeing Angkor Thom & Angkor Wat at anytime is great - the shear size of them is truly a wonder of the world.
Siem Reap town was surprisingly modern with some excellent restaurants and bars. We had a great time there and met up with our friend Woody who we met in Chiang Mai. Sadly time ran out and Dom had to fly to Singapore, so this meant the end of the adventures of Dominic and James from Wimbledon - oh well.

By JamesReed on 30.03.05 @ 02:45 PM GMT