Adventures in Asia: Siem Reap, Cambodia to Bangkok, Thailand

Yesterday we spent the day in Siem Reap, simply relaxing, getting laundry done, and doing a little shopping in the Old Market area.  Here's some street food I ate (fried noodles with an egg and fresh coconut milk) for $2:

This morning at 9:00 we caught a bus from Siem Reap to Bangkok.

We used Nattakan, which I think is the only company that does the full route direct to Bangkok, instead of having to transfer at the border.

The ticket is $28 USD, a bit more than other ways of doing the trip by land, but it sure saves a lot of stress, because it takes you direct, and your bags stay on the bus as you cross the border (you, the passenger, have to get off and walk it, however--you just meet the bus on the other side).

Upon departure the attendant man handed out a package of snacks to each of us and a bottle of water.  The snacks included a juice box, a canned coffee, and a wrapped pastry.

It was about two and a half hours to the border at a place called Poi Pet.  The highway was decent, and the bus seemed to make good time.  As with out tuk-tuk trip north of Siem Reap, there was lots to see, although it did not seem quite as "real life" when seen from the bus window compared to the open air tuk-tuk.  We stopped for the briefest amount of time in a city called Serei Saophoan to switch drivers, but otherwise it was straight through to the border.

Poi Pet is a gambling town.  Apparently for some reason gambling in Cambodia is attractive to Thais (I assume casinos are illegal in Thailand), so there are several if not dozen of casinos right by the border.  

One was so close to the actual border that we mistook its lobby for Thai passport control!

The bus let us off to get our passports stamped by Cambodia, and then we were told to walk 300 metres across the border to Thai passport control.  This was surprisingly challenging and confusing.  Like I said, it lacked clarity to such an extent that we wandered into a casino lobby thinking it might be where we were supposed to be.  Anyway, eventually it was clear we were crossing the border.

Once across it was pretty easy to figure out where to be and what to do, but it was a long, hot wait with hundreds of tourists in a queue.  I think we were there in a room creeping along in line for two hours.  The room was actually much cooler than outside, but nonetheless everyone was very hot and many of us were sweating profusely the whole time.

Eventually we were through (the officers were working very quickly and efficiently, I must say), and on the other side of a welcoming Thai gate.

From there it was not too hard to find the bus again, and once the last passenger was through we were moving.

I think the town on the Thai side of the border is called Aranyaprathet, and we stopped for gas there and a 15 minute break.

This was the bathroom I used there:

We were also given lunch at this point, a heated package of rice and salmon, which I found surprisingly delicious, but Andrea wasn't keen on (so I got to finish hers!).

A couple hours later we stopped again about two hours east of Bangkok.  This was an even nicer rest stop, with wifi and a peaceful artificial waterfall.

Also, more open air urinals.

We arrived in Bangkok just before 18:00, at a north end bus terminal called Mochit 2.  I had a decent plan for taking a city bus from here, but finding the bus stop proved a remarkable challenge!  We must have wandered for at least twenty minutes before finding it, and this was very, very frustrating. 

Anyway, once we located a bus I managed to make the attendant understand our destination, and everything worked out fine.  The bus took us to the metro, which was pretty easy to figure out, since the ticket selling machine had an English option.  It was also a surprisingly gorgeous system!

The 35 minute metro ride took us to exactly outside of our hostel, the @Hua Lamphong Hostel.  Hua Lamphong is the main Bangkok train station, and our hostel is basically around the corner.

We are very pleased with our room, although it is a bit on the pricier side ($50 Canadian).