The Trials and Trails that Led us to Cambodia

I admit, I knew next to nothing about Cambodia before I came. Even as I first stepped foot in Cambodia, all I knew was what I could read in the first couple of pages of my Lonely Planet guide book. I had an idea that Cambodian people in America were more likely refugees than immigrants, but I only knew one Cambodian-American boy who was born and raised in America.

Brian and my first experience on Cambodian soil (or headed to it) was not pleasant. We took a slow train to a border town in Thailand from Bangkok (I’m talking six hours on a standing room only train, with no conditioner, to travel about 150 miles—the distance from San Diego to Disneyland. Granted, the ride only cost us each $3, but still, it was bloody uncomfortable). A man on the train was so hospitable and kind as to offer his seat to a couple of travelers on the train. So many times, I witnessed Thai people being gracious and friendly to travelers. Unfortunately for Brian and I, we look like locals, so we never experienced such this kind of hospitality. On the flipside, we were treated fairly and as locals… again, probably due to our dark, ambiguously Southeast Asian features.

When we finally arrived in Aranyaprathet, we had to board a tuktuk and go to the immigration office of Cambodia. It was a bit stressful having so many people herd, hustle, and steer us toward certain taxis and tuktuks, wanting our business. We gave up on trying to share a taxi with a group and rode a tuktuk as a pair.

The driver took us to what I immediately recognized to be a scam visa office. He pulled up to the office and a man in business attire cheerfully greeted me and gave me some BS about us having arrived at the place where we should get our visa. I refused to get out of the tuktuk and told the driver to take us to the border. They argued with me for a while, but I was stubborn. A couple of other tuktuks arrived with foreigners onboard—I waved them away and called to them that this was not the immigration office. When the businessman realized that I was scaring off his customers, he waved our tuktuk driver away, and that was that. Our driver then took us to the real immigration office, we paid him, and he left.

Next, Brian and I walked a few hundred meters to the immigration office. Many men lounging about in the streets helpfully tried to point us in the right direction, but after the experience with the fake visa place, we didn’t know who to trust anymore. We eventually found what seemed to be the right place—a very plain, rundown building run by men in police officer-like uniforms. The price for the visa was posted as $20 + 3,000baht. The last part was handwritten. It was obvious that these police officers were scamming off of tourists for an extra fee, equivalent of 3USD. I was disgusted, but I overheard many other tourists in front of me try to argue away this unlawful fee and fail, so I just forked over the money.

Applying for and attaining our visa took about 5 minutes; waiting in line at the border took another 15 or so. If we had applied for our visa online ahead of time, we could have saved ourselves $3 each and the stress of getting scammed, but the wait time was no difference for those with an online visa and those with an upon-arrival visa.

 After we cleared immigration, we waited for a charter bus to take us from the border to Siem Reap. These bus companies wait at immigration until the bus fills up, at which time, it departs for yet another bus depot. At this bus depot, Brian and I met a few tavelers, and were roped into converting some of our USD to Cambodian dollars. We were again scammed and ripped off—we were told Cambodian shopkeepers accept both USD and Cambodian dollars but that we would save money in the long run by having our money converted. Total BS—every shop and restaurant accepted both USD and Cambodian at equal prices. We lost another $20 or so.

After we got off that second charter bus, Brian and I were again bombarded with tuktuks looking for our business. We already had a hotel reserved and we knew that these tuktuk drivers wanted to take us to certain guesthouses with whom they had deals for directing customers their way. We wondered how we could find an honest tuktuk driver who would just take us where we wanted to go.

Luckily, a Filipino family who was sitting with us on the bus stepped in and helped us out. We chatted a bit on the bus about being from the Philippines; it turned out that one of the family members now lived in Cambodia as a teacher. He has a personal tuktuk driver who he calls up whenever he needs a ride; after one phone call, we all squished onto the back of his tuktuk and we were taken directly to our hotel.

The hotel cost about $20/night, much more than the typical $3/night guesthouse that you can find in Siem Reap. It was comfortable, with wi-fi, breakfast, and—rejoice!—an air conditioner in the room.

The Grand Palace, Bangkok, Thailand

"I'm either lucid dreaming right now, or I'm in a video game."

These were the thoughts that entered my head as I stepped onto the grounds of the Grand Palace in Bangkok. The colors that greeted me were brilliant -- not brilliant like British speak for "this is awesome, yo", but brilliant like vibrant, rich, and breathtaking. The shapes and magnificent sizes of the structures seemed otherworldly. Due to being misdirected and conned by the peddlers outside of the palace walls, Brian and I missed the 2:00pm free tour in English of the palace, so we had no choice but to explore in complete ignorance and naivete. I had no idea what any of these buildings were used for, how old the buildings were, or what they looked like from the inside. No matter, there was plenty to see on the outside, and the mystery added to the structures' mystique.



I alternated between sitting and staring and statues and images in reverence and darting back and forth from tall building to fat structure, snapping many disappointing pictures of the sights that I knew were memorable enough with or without the pictures that did no justice. Some buildings were too tall to fit in the frame of my pictures. Others had colors whose hues did not quite match that of their photographed version. No matter; simply being surrounded by the strange and foreign objects was good enough for me.

On the one hand, I was a stereotypical tourist doing little more than looking. I wasn't learning about a country's history, language, culture, or every day life of its citizens by wandering around the palace grounds, point-and-shoot camera in hand.

On the other hand, the feeling of newness, feeling of awe for my fellow humans halfway across the world and of a different era, the feeling of being oh-so-small in an oh-so-big world were satisfying enough for me. My long-time thirst for the world was being quenched even in the harsh humidity of a Bangkok summer.

Even as a young girl who relocated houses, schools, and countries every few years, I'd felt that the rest of the world was calling to me to stay on my feet and stay on the move. "Get out of California," beckoned this mysterious call. "Get out of the States. See what I have to offer. Learn new languages. Meet new people. Wonder at my beauty and mystery." The Grand Palace showed me colors that I didn't know existed. I felt like I was learning life lessons non-verbally -- lessons whose purpose are still not clear to me, yet my brain and soul stored nonetheless for future use.

So this is what living my dreams (lucid dreaming?) feels like. As a twenty-something with no clear agenda of my life, I'm hopeful for more experiences like these in the coming years. Who knows what other indescribable lands lay beyond my ever-changing threshold? The only way to find out is to keep my eyes, mind, and soul open and to stay on my feet and on the move...

Bangkok: Making Mistakes

A successful trip to the National Museum

One tip of the many I was given by close friends who have traveled in the area was“prepare to be ripped off. Just accept the fact that you will be. The sooner that you can accept this, the sooner you’ll get over it when it happens and the more you’ll enjoy everything else about your adventures.”

This piece of advice paints a picture of the traveler as a fairly innocent bystander being taken advantage of by the big, bad scammer who promises cheap seats on a riverboat to the best local eateries in town... until the wide-eyed traveller is left with nothing but overpriced tickets and, at best, decent food made by a chef who collects money and makes sandwiches with the same unwashed hands.

In reality, being a savvy traveler is not as easy as saying "no" to the non-uniformed ticket salesman. You'll exhaust yourself being weary of every tourist-hustlin' hustler on the street. Accept the fact that as a first timer in a country, youwill make mistakes and those mistakes will cost you money. Slightly bigger mistakes will cost you time. Accept it. Learn from those mistakes and get exponentially smarter as you navigate about new cities.

Learning to use the City Line sky train

On our first day in Thailand, Brian and I set off on our adventures in “Bangkok” after paying $12 for lunch for two and $17 for a private driver service to take us to a small shopping center 10 minutes away from our hotel. We learned later that the destination was not at all Bangkok; in fact, it was actually quite far from the edge of the capital city. Thereafter, each of our meals cost $3-$6 for two and taxi rides quadruple the distance of that first ride cost us $3. I was upset when I saw how quickly we blew through what could have been an entire day’s worth of expenses on lunch and a ride to the mall, but we promised never to make that mistake again. And we didn’t, exactly. We only used the overpriced driver service one more time to take us into actual Bangkok. Once we were comfortable with the general location of the city and the location of our hotel with respect to it, and once saw that not every other person on the street seemed to be a pickpocket or murderer, we became more confident to explore on our own(together).

Wandering around Taling Chan because the floating market was closed.

We learned to look up the visiting hours of tourist attraction after trekking across all of Bangkok to the town over only to find that the river market we wanted to visit was only operational on weekends.

(The trip wasn’t a total loss though: We somehow ended up at the police station after wandering the town looking for a map. The chief of police was summoned outside to personally help the confused, non-Thai-speaking travelers. He ducked inside the police station for a few minutes to dig up some old maps for us (I guess small towns outside of frequently traveled cities don't bother to update their town maps and guidebooks). When he reappeared, he invited us into the station, where he made a big show of having everyone in the station stand and applaud as he theatrically handed Brian and I each a map and a brochure (in Thai) about their city. We shook hands with him and posed while another policeman took our picture. “Welcome to our city!” the chief of police said, smiling broadly. Brian and I did our best Thai “thank you” bow and slipped out of the station slightly embarrassed by all the pomp and circumstance. We just wanted a map.

Finally visiting the floating market the next day.

The floating market does not disappoint!

We learned that scammers hang out in front of expensive tourist hotspots. You’ll notice that these lessons that we learned sound like things we shouldn’t have to experience to learn, but there you have it. When we visited the Grand Palace,our taxi driver told us to go into the main entrance where we could borrow long skirts and sleeved shirts in order to be appropriately dressed for the palace. As we proceeded to the entrance, a jolly, English-speaking Thai man greeted usand told us to get our appropriate clothing at the “other” entrance down theway, so we turned around and headed in the direction he pointed. As we were walking, another man told us that the palace was closed from 2pm-3pm for aspecial occasion (it was 1:45 at the time) so we should take a tour on his tuk tuk around the area to look at thesleeping buddha and other photo opp sites. We thanked him for his helpfulinformation but turned down his tour offer. We decided to walk over to theKing’s royal palace when we heard an automated message over the loudspeakers ofthe Grand Palace: “Skirts and shirts are available to borrow free of charge atthe main entrance. The Grand Palace is open to day until 5pm. Do not letstrangers divert or otherwise delay your visit to the palace.” We were had. Andwe were mad. It was a good thing that the Grand Palace was one of the most awesome scenes I’d ever seen in my life. When another scammer tried to divert Brian and my visit to the National Museum a couple of days later, we were savvy, and were able to get away from him after only 20 full minutes of him holding us up and talking to us. Some lessons are learned slowly.

Inside the Grand Palace, after having successfully entered and borrowed appropriate clothing for free.

Bangkok: New Arrivals

When Brian and I first arrived in Bangkok, a new anxiety hit me. I was excited and a little bit afraid for my life. I  relate the feeling to being next in line at the county summer fair’s rickety roller coaster: you figure it’s safe enough because hundreds of people do it every year, yet you know that one wrong turn or small lost piece in the system can send the entire thing crashing down, thus ruining your summer and maybe your life.

My passport is a testament to my fair experience in travelling abroad. However, this was my first time being in a new country where I didn’t know the language AND I was travelling with only one other person (who also didn’t speak the language) AND I wasn’t a part of a tour group, AND a million other ingredients for disaster.

I somehow decided that first thing’s first: we needed a map and local currency. It was nice to have something to focus on: a goal. Two, in fact.

We slowly made our way through immigration (we were confused about whether or not we needed a visa even though our family members already told us, no, we didn’t need visas, and every sign around us at the airport listed the countries that did not need visas, and official looking people were waving us ahead without making us fill out an application form). We picked up our luggage. We exchanged a tiny amount of money because 1) we couldn’t tell of the money exchange booth was ripping us off and 2) we had no idea how far $20 could get us and we didn’t want to be left with Thai baht after our short 5-day stay in the country.

We sat around for a bit wondering how to get to our hotel. Our printed reservation was in English and it only included a tiny, zoomed in Google maps drop pin of the location. No map. We didn’t have a phone or change for a payphone. We knew that if we hailed a taxi, we wouldn’t know what to tell the driver and we wouldn’t know if we were paying a fair amount. I started to fear that the next two weeks in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam were going to be spent like this; not know how to get from A to B and strangers waiving us off as we desperately asked for help in English.

I started wandering around and asking airport employees all the questions we had. Where’s a payphone? Where can I get change? Do you know this hotel? Where is the shuttle for the hotel? I mimed when necessary. My favorite part was at the end of my encounters with the Thai workers. They pressed their palms together in front of their chest in a prayer position, bowed royally with their eyes closed from their neck (not at the waist, unlike the Japanese), and held their head down for an extra second before raising their head again. I felt awkward at first – what do I do, copy them and look like a wannabe fool or not copy them and look awkward anyway along with rude? Luckily, I wouldn’t have to choose because my culturally sensitive instincts acted faster than my decision making brain cells: I laughed nervously and quickly dipped my chin towards my chest before quickly walking away.

Once I started asked questions, proverbial doors started opening. One employee led us to a tourist counter, a service counter whose employees sole purpose is to either reserve a hotel room for you or put you in contact with your hotel. The lady at that counter led me to a man who knew were all the hotel shuttled pick up their guests. That man led us to another man who had a radio walkie talkie to summon each hotel shuttle as each of their guests arrived. He personally walked us to our shuttle whose hotel name was marked in large, gold, cursive font on its side. The driver loaded up our luggage while I clutched my purse – our lifeline containing all our money, passports, and baon from the Philippines – with white knuckles.

Brian and I were the only passengers in the 15-seater van, but I insisted to Brian that we sit in the back seat, furthest from the driver (whom I was still suspicious would charge us too much for this ride) and closest to our stuff. I was still getting over the shock of having our luggage taken out of our hand by the driver before I knew that he was a good guy and on our side. The driver stepped into the front passenger seat of the van and looked at us in his rearview mirror sitting all the way in the back of the van. I could only see his eyes, but I could tell he was laughing without making any sound. And then we started moving. Wait, moving?! Who’s driving the car?!

Oh, Thais drive on the left side of the road. And no, we are not driving into oncoming traffic. Whew.

So, we were on our way. The ride was about 6 minutes long and consisted of two or four turnabouts on a freeway. One more U-turn and we were there. Wow, I thought. That was fast; Bangkok must be small.

The hotel was indeed very small. We would learn later that most taxi drivers has no idea of its existence; it was hidden away and, to make things more difficult, its name was in English, not Thai. We checked in and was led to our room by three bellboys. Truth be told, they were running around so fast, that they accidently grabbed our luggage and the room key and ran off to the room before we could figure out what was going on. We got left behind and had to go back to the receptionist to ask him where our room was and baggage went. The bellboys had to return down the four flights of stairs (no elevator in this hotel; I wondered if it was because of frequent power outages and guests stuck in elevators like in –spoiler alert- Hangover 2) to come get us and lead us to our room.

The room was beautiful, comfortable, and had a view of little houses buried in lush, green forestry just across the street. Not bad for $20 a night. Brian and I “wowed” about the room for a total of about 5 minutes. We then knocked out for the rest of the morning. The combination of a week in the Philippines, spending a late night at the recording studio for a television show in the Philippines, the 4AM wake up call, and the relief of getting from point A to point B in a brand new country made for the perfect traveller’s morning tranquilizer cocktail.