The Wild West of Southeast Asia

We MADE IT! On our voyage out of the hands of the bangkok foot reflexologists into the Wild West of the Cambodia/Thai border and on to Siem Reap Cambodia. It began as a farely pleasant, yet sweaty journey on the local train. Stopping in ricey rural towns, commenting on the polyphonic spree t-shirt a fellow rider wore, the time passed quickly, we didn't even need to finish the sour cream and onion lays that were meant to hold us over for 5 hours. We arrived in the border town of Aranya prathet, all seemed well, we were scurried to a consulate where the first corruption seaped into our pockets....why are there babies playing in the consulate? Ok, so we were overcharged for our visas, we got over it quickly until we made the decision of two tired 20 somethings to keep going....we ran into a scammer of scams who tried to convince us of a deal on a taxi to Siem Reap. No Russians arrived and no deal took place so we high tailed it to a guesthouse, locked ourselves up and Dan watched law and order while I stood watch by the window where the dusty dealings of this Wild West town went down.

We woke up the next morning with a rumbling in our tummies from not eating since yesterdays breakfast and the trepidation of stepping into scammers paradise once more. This time we took the hard line approach, trust no one and look for white people. Well, this didn't really work, we ended up paying a lot for a taxi w/ some type of phone number/license on the windshield, but we MADE IT to Siem Reap home of the Angkor temples. We will fill you in shortly on dusty travels of Indiana Jones, Dan is lying in a hammock reading a book and listening to free jazz.