Traveling to Cambodia

We had quite the adventure traveling from Thailand to Cambodia. For the sake of the trip budget (and for a dose of real adventure) we opted out of flying and chose instead to take the train/bus route. For your amusement, I will provide you with a step-by-step explanation of our day yesterday.

Prelude: Try to spend the rest of your Thai baht on snacks for the train, so as to not end up with tons of Thai money left over. Fail miserably. We were grabbing all of the most expensive snacks in the 7-11 and still couldn't manage to spend more than $5.

1. Depart from Bangkok at 5:55am on a third class non-air-conditioned train.

2. Thank your lucky stars that there is a second class car on the train like the Lonely Planet book mentioned there might be, and sit down in it as fast as you can, before someone snakes it.

3. Ride the train that had no suspension for 6 hours to a small border town.

4. Take a tuk-tuk from the border town to the actual border.

5. Walk to Thai immigration, stand in line and hope everything goes fine.

6. Walk over the border into Cambodia. Get a little confused because there aren't really any signs for what to do next; but there are a lot of casinos.

8. Stumble upon Cambodia passport control. It looks so unofficial at first you will think there is no way this is the real place.

7. Stand nervously as the Cambodia passport control guy seems to be taking forever looking at your passport, and then requires a scan of all of your fingertips and take your photo. Then hands you your stuff and waves you along without uttering a single word.

9. Take the free shuttle to the nearest Cambodian border town.

8. Convince a group of other travelers to split a taxi van with you so the driver will agree to leave since he wouldn't until he had a full van.

9. Take the taxi-van two hours to Siem Reap, the town you are actually staying in.

10. Take the worlds slowest tuk-tuk from the bus depot to our hotel.

11. Check into your hotel and thank your lucky stars again you made it with no problems.

It was quite a day. After we made it we headed out on the town for some traditional Cambodian dinner, and it was amazing.

On our walk home from dinner I basically got attacked by a six-year old who wanted me to buy him some things. It was oddly terrifying and Joseph had to forcibly remove him from me and tell him "No," to which the boy responded by slapping him and calling him a swear word. It was so bizarre, and it left me feeling flustered on the rest of the walk home.