In the evening, I picked up my bags from Tomi’s place, thanked him for being such a gracious host and said goodbye. I hadn’t managed to find anyone else to host me in Bangkok and it was also too late now to start my journey to Cambodia. I had to find a place to stay the night, so I proceeded to the only place in Bangkok I was somewhat familiar with - Khao San road.

I could no longer walk on that road without a huge grin on my face, because everywhere I looked there was something to remind me of some crazy thing we had done there just a few days ago. I took up a small cheap room in a random guesthouse, got dinner and went to bed.

I had found on the internet a detailed and well written guide to crossing from Thailand to Cambodia over land through the Poi Pet border crossing. According to it, I would need an entire day to get from Bangkok to Siem Reap, and starting early was the key to having a least-hassle experience. So the next morning I was at Bangkok’s Hua Lamphong railway station, and got on the train to Aranyaprathet.

At the Hua Lamphong railway station

I still have hope that one day railway stations in India will reach this level of cleanliness

Remember how much I had complained about the train that we took to get from Bangkok to Surat Thani? This train to Aranyaprathet however, made the earlier train seem like flying first-class. This train only had cushion-less hard seats, was hot and humid and crowded, and seemed to stop every five minutes. But the best part was that this journey was really off the regular tourist-track. This was how the locals travelled. There were old women arguing, students playing pranks on each other, people haggling over foodstuff, schoolgirls sharing lunchboxes and so on and so forth. There was much for me to see, and I was an oddity for everyone else to gape at. To add to everyone’s interest, I took out my country flag patches and started stitching the flag of Thailand onto my backpack. As you’d expect, people around me were intrigued by what I was doing and were craning their necks to see what this obvious outsider was up to. After staring for a while, the woman sitting next to me couldn’t hold back her curiosity any more, and asked me something in Thai. I hadn’t the faintest clue about what she said, and with no possibility of finding someone to translate, both of us had to be content with embarrassed smiles and shrugs.

The train often passes by places where houses are right next to the track - much like in parts of Mumbai

Drivers often push their vehicles right next to the tracks and move them only when a train approaches

The proximity of life outside to the train tracks reminded me of the Maeklong railway market, though I didn’t get the chance to go there myself. The following video describes the market briefly. That is crazy even by Indian standards.

I’m not sure why but I didn’t see a single other traveller all the way until Aranyaprathet. I stuck out so much like a sore thumb that even some random policemen on the train wanted to see my passport and visa. They tried asking me something but gave up and moved on, thanks once again to the lack of a common language.

I asked a young boy to click my picture and he was more than happy to oblige

Once in Aranyaprathet, I got a tuk-tuk to take me to the border. But the tuk-tuk guy took me to some sort of travel agency. My detailed guide to executing the border crossing had prepared me for this. I repeatedly told the insistent “travel agents” and the tuk-tuk driver that I needed neither a visa nor currency exchange, and just wanted to go to the border. They were clearly disappointed, and reluctantly dropped me off at the border.

Departing Thailand, walking into Cambodia, and passing through Cambodian immigrations was a breeze thanks to the e-visa that I had already arranged for online. It was smooth sailing throughout except for an embarrassing goof-up on my part.

In my passport pouch I was carrying 80 notes of 10 Indian Rupees each. My plan is to show (and maybe gift) the relatively-low-yet-not-trivially-valued notes to people I might meet during my travels. After I had finished all immigration formalities, I kept my passport back in the pouch, but failed to close it properly. As I was walking away from the counter, all 80 of my Indian currency notes fell out of the open pouch. As luck would have it, they fell right into the stream of air blowing from one of the standing fans. There was a flurry of money flying everywhere and the notes got blown to all corners of the small room. Under normal circumstances, I imagine this would prompt laughter or at least sympathetic smiles from the onlookers, but since this was an immigrations cabin, the atmosphere remained tense, and nobody offered to help. I spent the extremely embarrassing next 10 minutes running all around the room collecting my money (in my haste, I failed to secure some of the notes I had already collected and the damned fans blew them away again). At one point, I had to ask one of the officers in the cabin to stand up and move his chair, so that I could crawl under his table to pick up some notes. Needless to say, when I thought I had collected most of them, I got my red-faced self out of there without bothering to count them, and without making eye-contact with anyone.

Entering the Kingdom of Cambodia

Once outside the cabin, I was legally permitted to travel in Cambodia for the next 30 days. It was late in the evening already, and there was no one I could share a taxi to Siem Reap with (Siem Reap was about 150 km away from the border). One taxi driver offered to take me there for 25 USD. I thought this was a fairly good deal so I accepted. Our first stop was a Cambodian gas station, which, to put it very very mildly, had zero safety measures. Trust me when I say this to you, dear reader, a bunch of kids pumping gas out of an inverted gas cylinder and into the car using foot pumps could be a little scary for the faint hearted!

A Cambodian countryside gas station

I was a bit nervous when the taxi began to slow down and eventually stopped in the middle of nowhere. The driver seemed like a frail old man, and I was sure that unless he knew some crazy martial art like Muay Thai or something, I could easily take him on. But I was thinking more in the lines of people jumping out of the side of the road and ambushing the poor Indian tourist. Nothing of the sort happened, because it was just a “taking a leak” break.

The driver knew the guesthouse I was looking for, and brought me there safe. I was happy and I gave him a tip of 5 USD. By Cambodian standards, this was a HUGE tip; and by the look on the driver’s face, I knew that I had made his day.

The staff at Sweet Dreams guest house where I was booked were very courteous, especially the Manager, Mr. Ni Ni. He said that I reminded him of one of his best friends, and that he would charge me only 4 USD for my room. Echo, a Chinese couchsurfer that I was in contact with and who had recommended the guesthouse, dropped by to say hello. We chatted a little about things to do in and around Siem Reap before calling it a day.