Bangkok – Aranyaprathet – Poipet – Siem Reap
After reading lots of reviews and advices on internet, we decided not to take an organized tour from Bangkok to Siem Reap and do all the way on our own.
Many people told us that even the agencies promise to take you from BKK to SR in one day, normally it is a very long journey, they try to take you to some hotel where they have comission and in the worrst case, they even don't provide transport from the border to SR.
So, we just need to follow these steps and hopefully can get to Siem Reap with no problem.
1. take taxi to North Bus station - Morchit
2. from Morchit take bus to Aranyaprathet
3. from Aranyaprathet bus station take tuk tuk to the Cambodian border
4. cross the border - walking
5. after crossing the border, in Poipet (fist stop in Cambodia) take a bus to Siem Reap
We got to the Bus station in a taxi with no problem, paid around 100 baht (2 euros) and took the bus to Aranyaprathet.
4 hours jorney, not the best bus, with with air con and even free water :-D
Just after arrival to bus station we took a tuk tuk and asked him to take us to the border. The price was 80 baht for 3 of us
For our surprise, tuk tuk took us to some place that he called border, but in fact it was atourist agency who wanted to "help" us to get cambodian visa. We alreay had visa (very easy to get visa online, cheap and fast), so did not need any help. Anyway, they gave us the forms to cross the border, which you normally complete in any border crossing, waited until we completed them and then said, that we have to pay them 100 baht each for their help. Juli said - "50 baht is enought, and i said "1 baht is too much for you! Let's go!". And we left yelling on our tuk tuk driver, and obviously did not pay anyting. This time hopefully we were going to the border!!!!
and this is the border :-D
first stop - Thai passport control
And here we go - Welcome to Cambodia!!
This is e-visa, the one you get in your email inbox after paying online and then you need to print it and have 2 copies for the border crossing. One copy is for you and another one you leave to the passport control officer.
After border crossing, we went to the bus station, where free shuttle bus took us to International Tourist Terminal.
This was obviously a place for tourist and did not seem at all to have local prices for the bus.
After fighting with the local guys and calling thm "cheaters" and "robbers", we finally agreed to take a taxi to Siem Reap and to pay for 3 of us 1,000 baht (20 euros). It meant we are going to take 2 hours jorney in private taxi till our hotel in Siem Reap - Not bad at all! :DDD
After taking a taxi, the driver said he needed to take something from his place to take something for his brother. The "something" was actually some kind of comercial shipment - around 5-6 big boxes with I don't know what. I suppose driver was taking some kind of comercial items to Siem Reap without paying extra money for the transportation :-DD
We have arrived to Siem Reap station in complete dark, going in a car in a dark tiny street and in the end we saw around 20 tuk tuk drivers waiting for us in the dark - I started to panic!!!! Somehow, Juli and Luciano told me to calm down and we agreed to take one of tuk tuks who was promising to take us to our hotel in SR. The hotel was reserved by a local couchsurfer, Ben, whom I contancted through couchsurfing website and who helped us to book the place.
In the end tuk tuk took us to the hotel and everything ended up well. Hotel was nice, had free wi fi, air con, breakfast included and double room was just 15$ (around 10 euros).
Amok - cambodian national food was really good!!!
Then we went to have a beer on a Pub Street, a street full of bars and restaurants. I proposed to go to some place I saw on the street, where beers were 2 for the price of one and cheap, but Ben somehow told it is not a good place. As a consequence he took us to another place, which looked good, but beer was more expensive (not much more, but still). While we were deciding what to drink, Ben already got a beer...but without ordering. So result was that he was getting free beers in this place, in case he brings clients. Same thing happend with the hotel. It was a good place and good price, but Ben got his comission for bringing us. He also did not want me to negotiate with tuk tuk driver on the street, for Angkor Wat tour, I suppose he had someone he knew in mind to take us there. Yea, this is the reality!
Anyway, in the end we negotiated with a tuk tuk driver (one of many on the streets of Siem Reap who propose to take you on a trip to Angkor Wat) and agreed to pay 12$ for 4 people (around 8 euros for 6 hours trip). Why 4? Because we had a new memeber in the team - estonian girl, called Gaili, who contacted us through couchsurfing and agreed to join us. She was traveling for 3 weeks for holiday, and her plan was Cambodia and then Vietnam!
That sounded like a spy movie! one of my fellow guests at a discount hotel Bangkok made it to Cambodia the same way.
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