back in cambodia

my journey started at 4am this morning, shower, packed, took a taxi to the train station: eerily quiet and full of sleeping beggars. a five hour train ride turned into an eight and half hour train ride, but it only cost a dollar to get from bangkok to the cambodian border at poipet so i'm not complaining. split a tuk-tuk with a japanese backpacker to the border, the driver tried to rip us off, but failed miserably and was oddly resigned to defeat, after several direct orders to take us straight to the border he relented and no longer wanted us to play cards with some of his friends and get a visa from them.

a mean immigration man wanted a lot more money than i knew that we had to pay, but again, after a few, okay fine i will go back to bangkok to get a visa and you won't get any money from me, he relented. crossed into cambodia, and boarded a little bus through a mob of so called "mafia taxis" met a guy that i trusted for some reason, he took me by motorcycle to his house, arranged a share taxi to come pick me up and i sat in a camry, that if you switched the driver and passenger seats, and tacked on a "bkends" license plate would have been susan daigre's car. felt bad for the pack of brits in front of me at immigration who were boarding a so-called ksr scam bus. in this scam passengers are taken to a remote location , the driver feigns the car's break-down, kicks everyone out, and then his friend shows up charging them ten times as much to just get them back to where they started. atleast they weren't traveling solo, so they have good company in their abandonment.

thumped along on highway 5 for two hours, and slipped around a massive rainstorm, trash heaps, children with distended bellies, gas stations comprised mainly of whiskey bottles full of petrol, and the putrid smell of burning plastic that has been consistent since the outskirts of bangkok. but for five dollars, a mildly painful lesson in cambodian music, and an introduction to an adorable family and the lengths they go to to milk the tourism bribery schemes without directly ripping anyone off, i have arrived in battambang.

in the morning, after a HOT shower, and some early morning bathing in air con, i am taking the bus to phnom penh.

so i made it. and now after an ankor beer and some khmer food, i'm headed to bed.