Holiday in Cambodia Part 1

Well, we dont get a spring break in Thailand (although we do have newyears in apirl) but i wanted a spring break trip anyway. Also, my visa was running out and it was either go and fill out paperwork or leave the country. Plus, I felt that angkor wat was a nessecary sight to see while i was in southeast asia, so cambodia it was.

Steve, Johnny and I woke up early thursday morning and headed to the bus station to take a bus to Aranapotet. or something that spelt similar to that. Searching for the actuall spelling would take to long in this internet cafe. In the boarder town we were dropped off near a market that was almost right on the boarder. Of course comming out of the bus we were greeted by touts, but i had expected to be dropped off by the busstop not the market, so i was unsure of where to go and followed the touts.

One of them lead us to his little travel agency where he said that we could get our camboidan visa. Now i knew that we could get it cheaper at the boarder, but i had no clue where it was, and any tuktuk around here would charge me up the ass, especially because this guy would follow us and tell the tuk to charge us high so taht we wouldnt take it, so i reluctently relented.
The good part of this arrangement was that we handed them our passports and they filled out all of the forms for us while we just chilled. Then we looked over the forms and signed them. Then they came back with the visa after a short wait.
Then we were taken to the border. It was about 100 meters away around a corner. Someone from that travel agency probaby literally walked with our passports over there to get the visa.
At the boarder they offered us a taxi to Siem Reap for a reasonable cost, so we took that. The extra fee for thier troubles was 200 baht each, which actually wasnt too bad.

To make sure we got in the correct cab, there was also a guy who walked us through the entire border process. He waited on the other side while we waited in line to get our Thai visa stamped. He then walked us past all of the casions (there are a ton in the neutral zone between the two countries. On the weekends its full of people, espeically thais) We then had to go to fill out the health form (no, i do not have H1N1) and get a stamp on our Cambodian visa.
We then got on a bus that took us to the bus station. At the station there was a money exchange (Dont do it, the exchange rate in Siam Reap is better) and a small convience store. We then got hearded into a taxi.

The taxis in cambodia are not like the taxis in thailand. They are not really taxis. They are just normal cars that are for hire. So we got in and settled for the couple hour journey to Siem Reap. They had built a new highway within the last year, and the trek used to take a full day.
Our driver went to fill up and stopped at a gas station...kind of. There were many stands on the side of the road that sold pepsi bottles full of gas. I dont know how the system works, but thats how you fill up the tank. So he had some guys pour that into his tank and away we went.

Cambodia is FLAT. Its flatter than Iowa. Sure once every 45 minutes to an hour we saw a single mountain in the distance (not mountains, just one) but other than that it was just one vast plain.
About halfway through the drive i noticed that although the driver was on the right side of the car we were driving on the right side of the road(unlike thailand) this made his passing slower vehicals rather epic.

When we got to Siam Reap he had us get out at a guest house, that of course, wasnt the one we asked him to take us to. (because he wanted his kickback from this place). I would like to take the time to point out that I thought we should take a tuktuk to the planned guest house (we already had a room booked there. Not showing up would only cost some 200 baht, which is an okay thing to just call a sunk cost if we need to). As we were talking amongst ourselves an employee came out and started smooth talking steve and johnny. So we went up to look at a room and saw that it had air conditioning 3 beds, a tv, and a fridge, so they wanted to stay there. I went with the flow and relented.
We got settled, and then went out to get some food. We found a pizza place nearby and it was quite good. When we got back to the guest house the air con wasnt working anymore. So i went down to tell the front desk. We were then informed that we only paid for a fan room, so they turned off our aircon and that the aircon would be 7 dollars more. I told him that they said that we would get aircon for 10 dollars (Cambodia likes US money and works on a system of useing both US and Cambodian money. Its wierd to get used to). He said that i was wrong. I said tomorrow we would be finding a new guest house.