Fruited Plains

Cambodia. Wow. This is a whole ‘nuther world from Thailand. We really are in the third world, all of a sudden, just by crossing a line on a map. The way to get from Bangkok to Siem Reap (where Angkor Wat is located) is to fly. If, however, you didn’t plan far enough in advance, the plane tickets are very expensive, and the best way is to take a public bus to the border in Thailand, then after an hour’s worth of immigration silliness in Cambodia, hire a private taxi to take you to Siem Reap. This costs 50 dollars to hire the whole thing. If you can find others to split the cost with you, it’s still 50 bucks total. This is what we did.

Tips for immigration: take several passport photos with you when you travel. We managed to get some at a photo place down the street from our hostel. Take four or five extras with you when you travel, as many government agencies love them, if only so that they can “fine” you for not having them. LP Cambodia says this fine should be $1, but the people we wound up sharing the taxi with paid $5. The Cambodian government is corrupt to the last person, and will ask you for more all the time, but won’t really follow up much if you refuse. The official fee for a visa is $20 or 1000B (which is about $27 – take US currency with you). They will ask you for more, or for baht instead. Just keep pointing at the sign that says, clearly, “USD 20”. You might not get away with it, but we did. Our taxi-mates paid $50 each, somehow. They got screwed. As you walk from section to section of the border crossing (there are about 4 different lines to stand in), there are free buses that take you from place to place. The organization that runs these buses acts like the Tourist Police, but I don’t think they are. I think they are trying to funnel people to the taxi services. But that’s what we wanted anyway, so we didn’t mind so much.

Anyway, eventually, you’re down a scary dirt road, well into Poipet, the border town on the Cambodian side, and you wind up at some sort of bus depot. There you can hire the taxi. We found two other white people there, with mad faces on. I asked the guy behind the desk how much a taxi is, he tells me $50 (after making sure how many people – it’s the same price no matter how many people, so I’m not sure why they bother). I asked the white woman what the problem was, and she had paid for a bus to Siem Reap, that was supposed to leave an hour ago, but still hadn’t, and with only two people interested in riding, probably wouldn’t until the next day (she was mad.) I said, hop in our taxi, we can split the cost. She took a few minutes to get over eating the cost of her tickets ($30 each), yelled at everyone at the bus stop (and they yelled back), then grabbed her husband and joined us.

Astrid and Alex are from Belgium. They speak Flemish as their first language, which surprised me (I knew half the country spoke Flemish, but was expecting them to speak French anyway). They also both spoke excellent English. As I said, Astrid was pissed, and tried to vent at the taxi driver as well, who (lucky for him) spoke little English. She didn’t get any happier when I told her what the visas should have cost. They had just flown in from Brussels, immediately got on a bus in Bangkok, then all the way to where we were, so I think a little grumpiness is forgivable (they had been traveling for at least 24 hours at that point.)

Anyway, this part of Cambodia is flat. You can occasionally see in the distance an outcropping of rock, but it’s mostly just rice fields as far as the eye can see in any direction. The rice is that most beautiful shade of green that new growth in plants has. And it contrasted with a cloudy (sometimes dark thundercloudy) sky. I don’t think any of my pictures will turn out well, due to the road.

The road from Poipet to Siem Reap is the worst road in the entire world. Angkor Wat has the potential to be one of the top tourist attractions in the entire world, so you might think this road would be first on the list for repair and upgrade. There is a rumor, reported in LP, that a certain airline which flies into Siem Reap, has remitted a certain ‘fee’ to a certain government agency to move this particular road to the bottom of the list.

Potholes in this road are patched with what looks to be 5-inch-minus gravel. (That’s not a typo – I don’t mean 5/8’s minus. I mean cobbles which average 5 inches in diameter.) It’s something you’d have trouble walking on.

Most of the roads in the country were last paved in the 1960s. Then they had the eastern part (not this part) of their country bombed back into the stone age by America (this bombing campaign is estimated to have killed 600,000 people, roughly a third of what the Khmer Rouge later killed. And we weren’t even at war with them.) Then they had a communist revolution, the brutality of which is now legend, but many of the people you see on the street somehow lived through. Then they were invaded by Vietnam. Then they spent a few decades having a civil war (during which we funneled weapons and funding to the Khmer Rouge, just to annoy the Vietnamese.) They now have a government of sorts, with elections, even. But, the only people building roads are western relief agencies doing it with western aid dollars. The Khmer Rouge systematically killed anyone with any kind of technical skills (they practically killed everyone who could read) so the need for western specialists is probably legitimate. And the UN bureaucracy is happy to provide, and shamed western governments sign the checks.

Considering this country’s history, it’s a wonder they don’t just shoot Americans on sight, or slip poison into our food. But, the locals are for the most part quite friendly. The rest of the world seems to be a lot better than we are at separating out the actions of a government from responsibility on the part of the citizens of a country. Perhaps this is because we actually feel a sense of participation in our government, and assume everyone else does. I have a feeling most of the world feels they have very little involvement in what their government is up to, and assumes the same is true of you.