Cambodia bound and scammedMay 24, 2012
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| The travel company took us at about 8.20 am to a mini bus headed for the border. We picked up his mate on the way and had a trouble free trip of about 3 hours towards the border. Then he stopped at this restaurant/hotel to eat and the owner tried to sort out our visas for us. We know this is a well known scam as they say they can sort it out for about £20 but when you get to the border you have to pay the officials anyway so we said no. This little Thai bloke then started getting really stressed out and even swearing in English, we still refused to pay him and we eventually got taken to the border and they would not help us to get the taxi in Cambodia we had paid for so we ended up walking through the border on our own, sorting the visa out really quickly and getting a packed bus to Siem Reap in Cambodia. It seems these companies and people just rip off tourists all the time and nobody seems to do much about it, luckily we had read about a lot of the scams and so we didn't lose out too much apart from time and a bit of money but some people get really ripped off. Anyway for all the good it has done, I have sent an email to the company and copied it to the Thai tourist office, another lesson learned. Cambodia itself is very much like Thailand except it is a lot poorer. There is still a lot of rubbish around and the roads are worse but the people seem nice enough and smile a lot. We took another tuk-tuk from where the bus dropped us to our hotel. I had booked the hotel online and the way we travelled took us through some really ropey parts of the city but we ended up going down this road and our hotel is at the end. A real 4 star hotel very nicely made and our room is great all for £20 per night including breakfast although that is always a bit dodgy in the Far East. Anyway we had a nice meal last night in the restaurant and a couple of beers then a nice kip. Next day we wanted to find a laundry to do our washing which was piling up. We went for a wander from the hotel, bombarded with shouts of taxi, taxi and walked through the market close to the hotel. The market was a local one for local people and really down to earth with sounds of hacking and chopping of animals and meat and fish. The people were really surprised to see 2 Europeans in the market and kept saying hello and smiling, a bit smelly though. We found a laundry and went back to get our washing, 6kg of it done for $6 US although we had to bargain for that as the price said half that but the girl said oh that is for wash only, in other words you pick up your washing wet... we settled for the fee to have it dry. We then decided to jump in a tuk-tuk to the old market so we went over the road and spoke/negotiated with this guy to take us there, wait for us and bring us back to our hotel for $3. We went there, about 2 miles and he dropped us off and we went for a wander round and a drink but to be honest it was a tourist market and not even as good as the one by us but there were restaurants so we knew we could come back later. We went back to our driver and had a chat with him and organised the trip today plus a trip to pick us up tonight and take us to a restaurant then bring us back to the hotel as well as picking us up tomorrow morning and taking us to the temples at Angkor Wat for a few hours and then returning s to the hotel all for $10 US. We will probably get him to take us to the bus station to go to Phnom Penn the capital of Cambodia when we leave on Sunday. Anyway that is us up to date, hopefully more positive stuff to follow as we move through the country. |
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