Our last day in Cambodia was mainly travelling. We left Battembang early after breakfast at a rooftop restaurant in a nearby hotel (my moped driver was on reception which was quite worrying).
I also took a picture of this on the way to breakfast, because it doesn’t make sense! –L:
We had a 7 hour journey ahead of us by bus to the Thai/Cambodian border where we to change buses and continue our journey to Bangkok.
The border crossing was not as official looking as the one coming into Cambodia. This time we only took our hand luggage with us and a man with a trolley,
(i was thinking metal trolley like at the airport but should have know better) took our bags and Bouna told us we would see them on the next bus.
The smell at the border was very similar to the fish fermenting place which wasn’t nice in the heat. The whole place had a seedy feel to it and if you knew the right people I am sure it would be easy to get anything across. As we queued at passport control at the Thai side we were surrounded by locals who don’t understand the concept of queuing. Unfortunately for Zach and Renee who were at the back of our group, the locals thought that if they got close the queue might go faster. Every time we moved forward, they got even closer to the point it was getting uncomfortable! We also saw the best combover ever but sadly couldn't take a picture.
As soon as we were going again on the bus the change in landscape was obvious. Instead of the roads being lined with wooden huts with stalls on the side of the road with animals everywhere, in Thailand there were concrete houses, big supermarkets, more cars and generally everything was cleaner. It was much more commercial as well and we were shocked that cars actually stopped at the traffic lights!
Our journey to Bangkok to a further 4 hours with a quick stop at a 7-11/petrol station. This was better than one of the large supermarkets we’d seen in Siem Riep.
We arrived in Bangkok early evening and met the group for our final evening meal/drinks. We headed to Khao San Road which is the busy drinking district and famous amongst travellers. We ate at another small restaurant and saw a few other Intrepid leaders with their groups. Leigh and I both had Thai curry, mine green and Leigh’s red as we thought the red would be hotter but we soon realised mine was much hotter. I could only get half way through it.
After this we went to see Khao San Road.
It is a a mixing pot of every age, race and type of person. There is music coming from every direction, stalls selling a range of clothes, hair extensions, and food mixed in with tattoo parlours, bars and the odd hotel. Competition for drinkers is high so there are offers everywhere. We took a walk down the road to get a feel for it before heading to a bar called Shamrock. Upstairs a local band were playing covers of every kind of music and were surprisingly very good. We ordered a round of drinks (I went for Pena Coroda and hoped for a Pina Colada).
We ended up staying in the bar all night. The band had a couple of breaks but the drinks kept flowing and by the end of the evening the boys were quite drunk. They took it in turns to buy rounds of cocktails but they were really sickly. I have no idea what was in them. By Pina Colada definitely tasted very odd.
Renee and Zach had an early flight so left a bit earlier but eventually the bar was getting empty so we decided to call it a night. We got a taxi with Mr Kom who wanted us to book him for everything we might possibly need while we were in Thailand and crashed back at the hotel. Thank goodness we had a lie in the next morning and nothing major planned. We were going to need it.
Sunset over Bangkok from our Hotel window –L:
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