It was with a touch of trepidation we started out on our first land border crossing as we had read about many of the scams that exist with this particular Thai-Cambodian border.   Even though the buses are faster we have always enjoyed train journeys  so we set an early alarm for 4am for a 4.30am taxi ride to Bangkok’s main station Hua Lamphong,  a beautiful building built in Italian Neo-Renaissance style for our 6am train to the border town of Aranyaprathet. In hindsight we could have left it easily another 30 minutes as driving across Bangkok at that hour took only 10-15 minutes and not the hour + it would normally take during the day.

The train fare has remained the same for years now at 48Baht fare per adult and children were half price at 24B each, so less than $5 total for all of us to travel more than 6 hours by train.  Although it was 3^rd class and quite busy with locals using it as the transport between villages we were quite comfortable on the bench style seats enjoying the breeze and watching the panorama of rice paddies and villages from the open windows.We left on time at 5.55am but didn’t get in until 12.30pm,  an hour late. We had picked up some little cereal packets and milk and biscuits for our journey but as it was such an early morning the girls were famished by the time we arrived.

Forging our way through all the tuk tuk touts on arrival at Aranyaprathet we moved down the street away from the station and at the first intersection crossed the road and found a little café where the lady spoke good English and could cook something fresh, as many cafes have already prepared dishes sitting in trays, not something I want to risk eating on a travelling day!  She did a couple of pad thai omlettes and a mixed vegetable and rice and we washed them down with soft drink.  After a visit to our first squat toilets of this trip we jumped aboard a tuk-tuk with foldout luggage rack on the back for the 6km (80Baht) trip to the border of Poipet.  He first stopped at a big white building on the right hand side and started untying the rope securing the bags. We knew this was not the border proper so didn’t move and repeated “no, the official border please.”  He didn’t insist and retied the rope and got back in and moved further on up the road another 400 metres.

Walking down the centre of the road to an intersection we saw to the left saw an official Immigration sign pointing down the road and then another sign pointing down a alleyway along a green cement wall.  We lined up in an air-conditioned building in the foreign passport queue when  David noticed another queue for those with children with no one there – I knew they would come in handy for something! We then snaked around a little courtyard area out to the corner and crossed over the road to the right to the Cambodian Visa office.

We were given 4 forms to complete and then upon giving the completed forms, passport photo and passports and 2 x $20US back they promptly pointed out on the form that children are only free if they are in the same passports as their parents.  I don’t know of many countries that still allow children in their parents’ passport – certainly not western countries so we knew they really had us over a barrel.  We tried leaving just the $40 and moving away but it was obvious that they were not going to hand back the passports until we paid the additional US$20 per child. After a Mexican standoff lasting a good 10 minutes we parted with our cash and were told to wait “over there please 3 minutes” while they did up the visas.  Around us people were being asked to hand over additional 200B ‘tea money’ (wish they unabashedly put straight into their pockets). I guess as they already got an additional US$40 they didn’t even bother with the measley 200Baht from us!  I didn’t notice until the next day that the children’s visa stamp did in fact have gratis in the top right hand corner whereas ours had US$20.  Yep scammed all right! I have the feeling we would still be standing there if we hadn’t have paid our money though….

By now it was just after 2pm but next we  had to be stamped ‘in’ to Cambodia.  A 100 metre walk further up the dusty street past the casinos led us through a corrugated covered area with 4 windows at the end.  Due to fingerprinting it took a long time to move forward – over an hour of shuffling forward with the crowd to get stamped in. Then to the ‘official’ bus came that takes you to the transport station about 5km out of town.  We were corralled into the building and to the windows where the ‘official’ rates for buses and taxis are up on the window.  US$9 per seat in the bus or US$12 per person in shared taxi being US$48 per car for  the two hour trip to Siem Reap.  First I went to the window with the guy shadowing closely behind saying ‘taxi, taxi’ here $48.

With the ‘official man’ still following repeating “here, here you pay taxi here” I kept walking with David and the girls following on behind. Out the doors where the taxis are parked I kept walking and eventually lost the tout.  The further out I walked the more taxi drivers approached asking; “Do you want taxi?” When I stopped next to one he asked “how much you pay?”  To which I replied “What’s your best price?” They started at $35 then $30, by this time I was a fair way away from the building.  I said “$25” to which at first there was protest, “no $30”, I said again “$25” and then the first taxi driver whispered “you keep secret- I do for $25 you move over there,” pointing to the exit of the car park. After loading the bags into the boot all these official guys with clipboards and cameras (journalists we later found out) started moving around the car taking photos and protesting.  One man stood in front of the taxi demanding he pay them money to which he said he would pay next time. After an amount of arguing and negotiating we finally we got away and he discussed the situation along the way.  The taxi drivers get $30 of the $48.  Perhaps as this was the end of the day there would have been every chance he wouldn’t have got a fare that day so I guess $25 was better than nothing.  He stopped for gas along the way and David got out the check how it was done as they had to move the bags from the boot and syphon into there. An hour into the journey on the surprisingly excellent road the girls fell asleep – it had been quite a long and confusing day for them.  We gave the taxi driver the phone numbers for our Guesthouse and he rang to get directions and bought us directly here escaping another scam where most taxi drivers drop people of the edge of town necessitating a further tuk tuk (or remork in Cambodia).  We pulled into our guesthouse driveway just before 6pm having been up since 4am and leaving Bangkok at 5.55am.  A distance of just over 400km took 12 hours – phew.