We left Koh Chang two days ago and began the journey to the Cambodian border and onto Sihanoukville on Cambodia’s South Coast.

The journey from Koh Chang went smoothly apart from waiting almost an hour for a taxi from White Sand beach to the ferry port. We didn’t get the ferry until 4pm and weren’t sure if we’d make it across the boarder that day as planned.

We got off the ferry and straight onto a shared taxi to Trat. The driver quoted the fare as 50Baht as we got on then waited a few minutes and said 60Baht if we wanted to leave immediately. We refused to hand over the money saying it was fine for us to wait from some more people. But the driver collected the 50baht and then left immediately anyway!

The taxi into Trat took about and hour and we were driven right to the bus station to get a minibus to the Cambodian border. We got out of the taxi and were ushered across the platform straight onto a bus bound for the border. The bus cost 110Baht each it was very small and there wasn’t a lot of room for luggage so I was surprised when the driver kicked a passenger off the bus to make room for my bag to sit on the front seat. Kat tried to tell him to put it on the floor and we’d put our feet on it but he didn’t seem to understand.

By the time we reached the border over an hour later it was dark. As soon as we got out of the mini bus people swarmed on us offering us Taxi’s and trying to carry our bags. Fiona (from the hostel in Koh Chang) had arranged for a friend of her’s called whisky to meet us at the border. As I tried to get my bag from the front seat and explain to an eager taxi driver we didn’t need his services two men were already unloading Kat and Emily’s bags from the boot and putting them in a wheel barrow/trolly type thing so they didn’t have to carry them. But Kat and Emily quickly rescued them and hoisted them onto their backs.

We walked through passport control collecting yet another departed Thailand stamp. As I was filling in my departure from a man started talking to Kat, she tried to ignore him saying no to whatever he asked, then he introduced himself as Whisky, the man Fiona had arranged to meet us at the border. He showed us to his car and we left our bags before going to immigration to get our visas.

As soon as we got to immigration some men took our passports and began filling in the forms. A lady told us the visa cost was 1,200 Baht (about 20GBP) as opposed to the $20 or 10GBP quoted in the guide book. They would only accept the money in Baht we had to go back through passport control to Thailand to use a cash machine to get the money to pay for our visas. The guidebook said they may try and rip you off at the border charging extra but if you insist on a receipt they will usually lower the price. We asked repeatedly for a receipt but the woman refused to give us one saying they didn’t have any. We were at the border and not in a position to turn around and go back so we didn’t have any choice but to pay the money. We later met some other people who had been charged exactly the same at the border so they didn’t just rip us off.

Once we were through immigration we began the drive to Koh Kong the nearest town to the Cambodia border, where we were to stay the night. But not before severely upsetting the men who filled in all our forms by refusing them a tip. Well I didn’t ask them too they literally took my passport out of my hand and did it!

As we were driving along Whisky tried to entertain us coming out with cockney phrases such as “lovely jubley’ and “dimond geeza” although the humor was somewhat lost as it took us 10 minutes to figure out what he was trying to say!

On the way to the hostel he totally confused us about money saying we needed to change our baht into Riel but that we could use dollars then quoting all his prices in Baht! We’ve been here two days now and everything so far is charged in dollars, we’ve paid for room, food even souvenirs on the beach in dollars. The only stuff we’ve really used Riel for is water and we paid for breakfast this morning with Baht – Are you confused cause I am!

Anyway – We arrived at the hostel and were given a nice clean room with towels, toilet roll and soap – all things we hadn’t been given in a hostel for a while! We went to their restaurant for dinner (and paid in Baht) before going for a stroll around the area in search of chocolate!

We walked a little way until a motor bike driver asked us what we were looking for and directed us down a road. We walked a little way down the road until all the street lights disappeared and it was pitch black. I decided this was the point at which we went home. Kat and Emily wanted to keep looking but I decided that if I wouldn’t feel safe wondering around pitch black streets in Preston way should I feel safe in a small town in Cambodia that I know nothing about! So we walked back to the hostel without any chocolate and got an early night ready for our journey to Sianoukville.

* Posted by j150vsc on 14/07/2007.