Another day in transit, this time getting from Bangkok to Siem Reap in Cambodia. I am generally a fan of train travel, and after having a look at the Seat 61 website (well worth checking out if you want to use trains anywhere in the world) our plans were cemented. This is how we found ourselves on a street corner at 5am. Unfortunately the taxi driver we flagged down didn’t speak any English. Luckily Graham is more alert at that time than most people, and started doing train impressions including ‘choo chooing’ enthusiastically. The taxi driver burst in to laughter, let us in his car and carried on making train noises happily for the next ten minutes. The next stage involved getting a train from Bangkok to Aranyaprathet. This took 7 hours and only cost 90p for a third class seat, which seemed like an incredible deal until we realised that it had taken 7 hours to cover about 100 miles.

In spite of this I really enjoyed the journey. The windows could be fully lowered down, giving a clear view of the Thai countryside. For almost the entire journey we passed through rice paddies and could watch people going about their work. There were also fields of bamboo and other vegetables, water lillies and cages for cathing some sort of fish. The houses were almost all on stilts, and some even required a boat to get to the front door. Pelicans and storks flew past. This section is mainly for Graham’s benefit, as he spent the most of the time sleeping, and the rest of it reading his Kindle. At no point did he take a break from this to look out the window.

When we got off the train we navigated our way past the tuk tuks and got on the local bus, which cost about 30p, to take us to the border. After passing through passport control and crossing into Cambodia, we then got on a free bus which took us to the Poipet local bus station. So far, everything was remarkably easy (much like being on a tourist conveyor belt!). At the bus station we teamed up with a Spanish couple and got a taxi to Siem Reap, a journey of around 2 and a half hours at a cost or $12 each. The taxi driver promised to drop us all at our hostels, but a few kilometers away he got us out of the taxi and drove off, leaving us a bit confused and annoyed to find out that we were then expected to pay a local tuk tuk driver $1 per person to complete the journey we had already paid for. After a heated discussion we had to give in and get in the vehicle as it was too far to walk. This is the first time we have been noticeably scammed in three and a half months of travelling, and we only lost $2, but on principal we were pretty grumpy.

This scam does not in any way reflect the interactions we have since had with Cambodians. People here are friendly and multilingual. I’m very excited about our next few days here.

P.S. the title is a McCulloch special!