the boarder crossing

From Savannakhet we decided that it was probably better to cross back into Thailand and then make our way down to Cambodia then cross from the southern part of Laos. In Cambodia there just isn’t the infrastructure to travel easily so we thought the closer we entered to Seim Reap the better. The second bus we took was absolutely luxurious in comparison to the last few. It was air conditioned with extremely comfortable seats, karaoke, and then even a thai movie to entertain us. After that we got into a minivan to go to the boarder town where we would spend the night and make our way to the Cambodian boarder the next day. However, the minivan just simply dropped us at the boarder late at night. (note: no town, just boarder…which was closed). After a few minutes the three of us were surrounded by curious Cambodians standing around and staring at us…about 15 or so, as one of them who spoke a bit of English tried to sort us out (scam us) and called the boarder control guy from out of his slumbers to come down to the gates to sell us our visas. After about 30 minutes or so he showed up in a mickey mouse t-shirt, stamped our passports and demanded 1000 Baht each (even though it clearly said on the window $20 USD). Oh well. I suppose if he got all the way out of bed to meet us he deserves an extra $10 or so.
After our visas were sorted we got into the car of the guy who was sorting us out. In exchange for us agreeing to let him drive us to Seim Reap, he would take us to the market for food, and on to the guest house. When we pulled through the gates again he asked for our passports. It was all a bit sketchy and when he almost drove off without them until we jumped out of the car and got them back. I still don’t know what that was all about. He brought us back to the guesthouse and I set my alarm for 6:45 the next morning to be picked up by our personal driver at 7. because the roads in Cambodia are just made out of dirt, and often there is not much of a local transportation system, the only way for us to get from o-smach down to seim reap was by hiring a personal driver. We woke up by my alarm the next morning and went down to wait for our driver only to realize that it was actually only 4:45 am and that my alarm was still on japan time (oops). So back to bed we went.