After a night at the adequately fitted out Hualamphong Hostel, I lunched at the main Hualamphong train station, ready to take my train to the Cambodian border. I have probably already mentioned that I am meeting Cathy and Dave there (very excited too!), and that I will be coming back to Thailand. The plan was to take the train to Aranyaprathet on the Thai side, then a tuk-tuk (motorbike pulling a carriage) to the border by the time it closes at 8pm, get my Cambodian Visa, and then try to find a car share to Siem Reap on the Cambodian side. I have to be wary of any scams! While waiting for my train, I watched a very typically quirky Asian advert for a chocolate bar being filmed (see right).The train itself was a rackety 3rd class one, leaving at about 1pm, arriving at about 5:30pm - ample time to cross the border you would hope! It was nice to seem some daily Thai life going on... on the train many people hauled on farming produce and tried to squeeze large packages into very tight spaces. The carriages weren't air-conditioned, but the open windows and fans swept through my hair and the views of Thai local life and the paddy-fields whiled the time away.
When the train started to run 30 mins late, I started to be mildly concerned. At an hour late I was worried, and at 1.5 hours late I was becoming agitated! How could the train be so late?! There was a tuk-tuk journey on the other side, visa processing and border controls to complete yet! The train finally arrived just shy of 7:30pm. It looked like I was going to be spending the night on the Thai side of the border.
Determined, I teamed up with Jeremy (French Canadian), Anna (Portuguese) and Jiorgos (Spanish) - pictured - to make a good damned bloody-minded attempted at crossing to Cambodia. This is something that group-courage gives you the strength to do! A tuk-tuk driver hawked us as the train arrived, raced us to (an official?) Visa application office. As the passports were being processed, he time was 7:50pm! Sweating with our back packs, the visa application agent ran with us to the border control. We crossed Thai immigration at 7:56pm. At 8:00pm, two of us had been processed, and the other two hadn't. I was one of the two that hadn't! The computer stops working at 8pm... but the immigration offices manually processed us and we got through at 8:04pm!! It was a surprise we ever made it!
Buses aren't an option at this time of night... since they need to leave early enough to take the 5-6 hours journey to Siem Reap. We all clubbed together, and for about 10$ each we caned it in a hire car (with driver) - the journey took a mere 2 hours with no stops. Much to Cathy and Dave's Glee (pictured), I arrived at the hotel for 10:30pm in need of food, drink and then sleep.