This morning, I boarded my trip's second train. The train would take me to Aranyaprathet, a town on the Thai-Cambodian border. Sitting on the window, the train rattling away peacefully, a nice breeze coming in, and watching the lovely landscape pass by - is there a better way to start the journey to a new country?
Since there are only 3rd class trains to Aranyaprathet, we stopped at just about every village on the way. Some had nice train stations and English signage (like the one in the next picture), while others consisted of nothing more than a small shelter and a sign in Thai.
In Aranyaprathet, it was just about impossible to walk out of the train station: masses of tuk-tuk drivers were waiting to to take travelers the remaining 6 kilometers to the border post.
I had read a lot about this border crossing. In years past, the trip from Bangkok to Siem Reap must have been one of the worst imaginable journeys. Today, everything went smoothly. There was a rather long wait on the Thai side of the border, and some corruption on the Cambodian side: they demanded an additional visa 'fee' of 100 Thai baht, which then led to extremely speedy processing of the visa-on-arrival form (This was only the second instance of corruption on my trip - the first being the border post when I exited Guatemala overland - which isn't too bad for a 14-month journey in developing countries, don't you think?). Once in Poipet, which is the border town on the Cambodian side, I boarded a minivan to Siem Reap and arrived there in the late afternoon. Welcome to my Holiday in Cambodia!
