Hole In The Donut

I wanted to go to Cambodia for one reason only - to see the Angkor Wat Temple Ruins in Siem Reap. Reputed to be among the most beautiful ruins in the world, Angkor Wat has been discovered by tourists in the last few years and each day they descend upon the complex by the busload. The Cambodian government is doing little to protect the ruins and damage is occurring; it is only a matter of time until parts of the site are closed to tourists in order to preserve these valuable antiquities. I wanted to see Angkor Wat before that happens.

Most people who make the side trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap fly. Georgette, a woman I met in Bali who had recently traveled to Siem Reap, warned me that airfare is fairly expensive because Bangkok Air has a monopoly on the route. She also told me that you can go overland by bus, but that it is not a particularly pleasant trip because the road from the Thai/Cambodia border to Siem Reap is quite rough and full of potholes. I checked and she was right - airfare to Siem Reap was in the neighborhood of $350 round trip, which would blow my budget right out of the water. Instead I decided to take the bus for $60 round trip, booking through the tour desk at the Royal Hotel where I am staying. I figured it would give me an opportunity to see the eastern part of Thailand and, after all, I thought, how bad could the bus trip be?

The tour desk employee booked me through a company named Unseen Travel (should that have ben my first clue that something was fishy?). She told me that the bus would pick me up at 7:30 AM in front of the hotel and that I would arrive in Siem Reap around 5 PM. I was dutifully waiting in the hotel lobby at 7AM. By 8 AM, still no bus, so one of the hotel transport drivers called the company for me. Within a few minutes a short, round man with a Fu Manchu mustache and two-inch long fingernails arrived. Manchu grabbed my suitcase and headed across two major highways to the waiting bus, with me trailing behind. “Hotel street one way - bus not go,” he explained. An inauspicious start, but as long as I made the bus I wasn’t worried. Off we went. The Thailand part of the journey was without incident and around 12:30 PM we reached the border. That’s when things started to go wrong. I’d been watching the highway signs and had seen a sign for the border, with the arrow pointing to the left. Our driver turned right instead. This does not bode well, I thought. A few blocks later we pulled into a restaurant and hotel, where we were all herded off the bus. A short man in tan shirt, black pants, and a wide palm leaf hat that was fraying all around the brim seemed to be in charge. His eyes were invisible behind his large mirrored sunglasses. With every few words he sniffed loudly and rubbed his nose, like a coke addict the morning after a binge. He collected all our tickets, explaining that he would issue new ones for the Cambodian part of the trip. He handed us immigration forms to fill out, asked for all our passports, and demanded we each pay him $35 for the visa fee. And that’s when my mouth started to run away with me.

“The visa on arrival fee is $20, not $35,” I said. I had read all about these scams on Lonely Planet’s web site and they said not to pay.

“No you pay $35. I take form and passport to border and bring back visa for you,” he insisted. Some of the people on the bus stated to fill out the forms and pay the $35 dollar fee but those of us who held ourselves to be more savvy travelers were adamant in our refusal.

“This is not right. You are trying to cheat us.” Somehow I hade become the spokesperson for the rebel contingent. What I forgot, however, is that you must never make an Asian lose face. There are ways to go about these things and ways not to go about them, and I apparently crossed the line.

“OK, you take suitcase off bus and stay here. Maybe you stay overnight. Maybe you get taxi back to Bangkok,” he said.

“I’m not taking my suitcase off the bus and staying anywhere,” I exclaimed. “I paid $30 to go to Siem Reap and that’s where I am going. The visa fee is $20 and that’s all I am paying.” I realize that his employees were writing new tickets for everyone and asked for mine.

“We have no time for you now. We are busy, must work. You wait. Maybe 20 minutes we give you ticket.” Everyone else got their new tickets and the people who had paid the $35 fee were transferred to cars and taken to the border to go through Thailand Immigration and Cambodian entry, thereafter to be put on a new bus. The bus change is necessary because in Thailand they drive on the left hand side of the road and the steering wheel is on the right side of the bus. In Cambodia they drove on the right side, which necessitates changing to a vehicle with a left-hand side steering wheel. The rest of us renegades were told we had to wait “about an hour” before we could leave for the border - basically they were punishing us for not coughing up the $35 fee so they could pocket the $15 difference.

At 2:30 PM we finally boarded the bus for the half-mile trip to the border and, once aboard, they wrote me a new ticket for the Cambodian portion of the trip. Another employee of the firm accompanied us, explaining that we might be able to get on the same bus as the rest of our group if we can go through the border quickly. He further explained that the officers at the border do not make so much money, so we should understand if they want more than $20. “Sometimes you pay less than $35 but this take lot of time - you must hurry to make bus, pay fee they want.” What a racket.

When the bus pulled in to the border crossing area, Mr. Snorts with the sunglasses immediately began attempting to separate me from the rest of the group. He sent the rest in one direction and told me to follow him in a completely different direction. I refused to leave the group and followed them instead. I went through Thai Immigration and got my passport stamped - I had officially left Thailand. Now where to go? I was standing in the middle of a dirt street riddled with muddy puddles. In the midst of incredible squalor, dozens of street urchins began grabbing at my clothes, trying to get money from me. I looked up and saw an archway across the road that said Kingdom of Cambodia. Tucked away in a corner on the far right side of the archway was a tiny Visa On Arrival office. No sooner had I begun filling out the entry paperwork than Mr. Snorts appeared again. He again tried to separate me from the group, all the while admonishing me to hurry or I would miss the bus - meanwhile he had taken my passport from me and given it to the visa officer. The visa official wanted $23 instead of the required $20 to “expedite” my visa. There was no negotiating this time. I could either pay the $23 and get on the bus or pay $20, wait three hours for them to process my visa, and miss the bus. I paid it. Snorts, gripping my arm, led me to a motorized cart and told me to wait there.

“You still have my passport,” I said.

“Yes, no problem, I bring to you. Car not go until I bring to you,” he explained. He walked away and the cart driver started his engine and began to drive away. “NO, NO, NO!!!” I yelled. The driver stepped on the brakes looked back at me. I jumped off with my suitcase in hand. I wasn’t going anywhere until I got my passport back. Snorts hurried over with my passport, telling me everything was OK, and not to worry. I decided I had to find a way to take charge of this situation and I figured the best way to do that was to beat them at their own game. So you want to run a scam? Well, two people can play that game.

I grew contrite. “Excuse me. I am sorry for being so upset. But I am an older woman and I am traveling all alone. I am like your mother. I am scared. You understand scared? I am really, really scared. I have never been to Cambodia before and I don’t know how this works. Can you help me like you would help your mother?”

“Yes, yes, Mami. I come with you and help you,” Snorts said. He had the cart deliver us to yet another line where I had to fill out a second form, have my picture taken, and show my onward ticket. Finally I was stamped and through. Snorts led me to a bench and told me to sit. Twenty feet away, I could see all the people from my group boarding a bus, while Snorts continued with his scam: “Now Mami, you see I help you. I pay for you to get you through border.” He’s not going to let me on that bus until I cough up some money, I thought. A couple of minutes later I said: “I really don’t feel well. I think I am going to be sick. Can I get on the bus now so I am in the air conditioning? I am really sick because I am so upset.” I was on that bus in a flash.

We finally left around 4:30 PM. We went about two blocks, pulled into a parking lot filled with ankle-deep muddy water, where we had to disembark with all our luggage and wade over to the replacement Cambodian bus. In this vehicle, the seats were so close to one another that I had to sit at an angle. Even so, my knees butted into the seat in front of me. My seat-mate, Paul, couldn’t get in at all and had to make the entire trip sitting sideways with his knees out into the aisle. The space was so narrow that I couldn’t put my backpack on the floor, so I had to ride with it in my lap. We were told to close the windows because the air conditioning was running, but the A/C was tepid at best, so many of us reopened our windows. We took off for Siem Reap on the absolute worst pothole-filled, ungraded dirt road I have ever seen. We bounced and jounced and rattled along, weaving in and out of a steady stream of traffic that raised clouds of ochre dust, all but obliterating the surrounding landscape. It soon became apparent that the windows had to be kept closed not because of the A/C, but because of the choking dust. Whenever the dust cleared enough to view the surrounding landscape, there was was nothing but flat, featureless, arid land stretching for miles in every direction.

The further we traveled, the worse the road got. Windows rattled in their metal frames, making a sound like a million chirping crickets locked up in a single room. The wipers beat a steady rhythm, trying to clear the windshield of dust. Everyone was hot and sweaty, and ripe body odors mingled with the astringent scent of someone’s Wet Wipes. About two hours into this portion of the trip we made a stop in the countryside, where the driver picked up a spare tire - apparently he’d been traveling without one. I thought: He had no spare - on this road??? Every so often I had to “turn the other cheek,” so to speak, because my butt kept falling asleep. Including an hour stop for dinner in the absolute middle of nowhere (see the photo above of our blue bus in the midle of nowhere), this 156-kilometer trip (about 95 miles) took slightly more than five hours.

Just outside of Siem Reap the bus pulled over to pick up a “tour guide” who said, “Welcome To Cambodia!” You could have heard a pin drop on that bus. Our guide explained that all the roads in Cambodia are very modern, with the exception of this one between Thailand and Siem Reap, adding that Bangkok Air pays a lot of money to the Cambodian government to keep the road in poor shape so that everyone will fly their monopoly route rather than take the bus. He then said we would be arriving in Siem Reap in 15 minutes and the bus would stop at his hotel first so we could check out his $10 rooms with TV, fan, and hot water. The pressure to stay at his hotel continued until we arrived - three blocks down a dark, smelly alleyway off the main drag. I wasn’t interested so I stayed on the bus, along with several others. It wasn’t long before we were told to get off the bus because this was the end of the line. Those of us who didn’t want to stay had to pay to be taken elsewhere, all the time being told that all the other hotels in town were booked full for New Year, or were very high priced this time of year, etc. I insisted I be taken to the Borei Angkor, where they have a pool and Internet. All the way there I was assured that I would be unable to get a room there for less than $180 or $200 per night and he kept insissting that I go to some other places he could suggest. “Just take me to the Borei Angkor,” I insisted. we arrived and I asked if they had availability. Of course, ,they did - it is low season now, despite the fact that it is the Khmer new Year on the 15th. A nice room cost me $40 per night, including breakfast. The driver had followed me into the lobby, still trying to lure me away to another hotel. When I said I was fine, and told him the price I paid, the guy had the nerve to try to pressure me into hiring him as a guide for Angkor Wat. I told him I wouldn’t be having anything more to do with his company and sent him on his way.

Tomorrow I will look into flying back to Thailand. I’m glad I came here on the bus because, well, it was an experience I will be able to look back on and laugh about for many years to come. But I’m not enough of a sadist to do it twice. At the moment I can’t say I think much of Cambodia. Hopefully, after visiting Angkor Wat I will have better things to say.

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