Siem Reap, Cambodia

We started our journey from Bangkok where we took the bus to Aranyapratet and stayed 1 night. The next day we went to the Thailand-Cambodia border and processed through the immigration both Thailand and Cambodia. We had a small problem at the Cambodia immigration the officer there requested us to pay 100 baht per person for the entry stamp. We refused to pay at the beginning and argued with them that all our visas were being issued from the embassy in Bangkok. It seemed that they were not going to return our passports and one of my friends told me to finish the case soonest since we did not want to delay our trip, therefore, we agreed to pay them 200 baht for the whole group (5 persons).
Behind the immigration our pickup truck which we had already arranged in advance through one Cambodian lady at 3500 baht for the whole group to Siam Reap was ready there. I believed that they overcharged us but did not know what the actual price should be. The pick-up truck supposed to be for us only but they also put other commuters in the back of the truck with lots of goods. We left PoiPet at around 9.00 hours. When we reached Srisophon around 11.00 hours for a journey break and changed to another pick-up truck, then we complained to the lady we contacted for the pick-up truck which accompanied us up to Srisophon. Then from Srisophon to Siam Reap we were the only group on the pick-up truck. (We decide to negotiate our return transportation from Siam Reap with her and we finally got the price at 2000 baht for the trip from Siam Reap to PoiPet.)

We reached Siam Reap at 16.00 hours and still had time to visit Pnom Bakeng for sunset. Therefore, we found a car for us for the trip to Pnom Bakeng for sunset viewing on the day we reached Siam Reap and the next 2 day including Bantrey Srei at 50 Usd. On the way from Srisophon we were delayed for half an hour before passing through one bridge that wooden parts of the bridge were broken. We were worried about what the next problem we were about to face ahead. We faced another problem, the road was cut by flood. However, our driver managed to pass through. The people around there were very helpful (of course, a little money will do) to navigate which direction the car should go. Otherwise, the car might get struck in the mud. We admitted that our driver was very keen and knew the road very well. The road was in a very bad condition.

We stayed at a guest house near the Psah Chas market. There are plenty of food stalls at the market and we had our dinner at one of the food stalls there which served quite good food at reasonable price. And during our stay in Siam Reap (3 nights) we ate there and they even offer special food for us to order. One other thing we found in this area was that there was one good guest house named
Bakong Guest House at # 001, Sivutha Street Tel : 063-380126 e-mail : bakong@rep.forum.org.kh which offer 20 Usd for an A/C double room and 15 Usd for a single room (very clean, spacious room, even have bathtub and friendly owner). The owner is Ms.Ouk Chamroeun, she was kind enough to let us surveyed the room even we told her that we were not going to stay at her place this time. Actually this place was introduced to us when we had dinner at the food stall. Two lecturers from Thailand told us the place and we were curious to check for our friends for the next trip. We did not change to stay there because we did not want to waste our time to move from one place to another and the place we were staying was ok.

Moreover, make sure to carry the ticket when visiting the sites in Angkor Wat/Thom. One time my friend forgot to bring her ticket to see the sunrise over Angkor Wat at 5.30 hours , the guard at the entrant would not let her in. We talked to him for quite some time and finally he let her in but we had to give him so many reasons whatever we could think of and promised to show him the ticket when we came back from breakfast. In fact, we did not see him when we returned.

On the way back to PoiPet it took almost the same time to reach the border on time to catch the 15.30 hours bus to Bangkok. We reached Bangkok around 19.30 hours.

The Thai Baht is widely accepted all the way from Poi Pet to Siam Reap. They calculated at .

Somdet/Thailand
6 January 2000

COPYRIGHT 2000