Off to the Border

Back in town after our Wat experience, we were hot (the sun is so scorching) and hungry but were also keen to arrange getting to the border. We could have stayed another night in Siem Reap on a tight itinerary like ours and given its non Cambodian feel to the town we had decided to push through to the border to catch a train the following morning to Bangkok. The buses only leave in the morning so we knew we had to take a taxi - i know this sounds extravagant given its just over 100miles to the border but a) the road is a dirt road and I have a fairly boney bottom and b) it was only $30 so we decided to splash out.

We ate and grabbed some snacks for the journey and set off in a very old Toyota Camry (with 330,000km on the clock !!!) and no seat belts in the back! Excellent. However there was air-con and the seats were comfy. We were told it would take about 3 hours which gave us a spare hour to get over the border before it shut.

The drive was ok as long as you ignored the fact we often drove onto the wrong side of the road with an oncoming truck pounding towards us. The highlight of the journey was the view, Cambodia is as flat as a pancake and not those American fluffy kind, I mean crepes. You can see for miles is all directions and the sun was setting as we were driving along. Given how clear it was the sun dropped lower into the sky and started to turn the most gorgeous red colour from the bottom up, it then touched down onto the earth and melted into the horizon. I would have believed there and then that the earth was flat had I not known better. Ryan and I both agreed this was the best sunset we had both ever seen and we wished we could have filmed it - it was amazing. I tried to capture some of it by asking the driver to stop but it doesn't do it justice.

Driving in the dusty & bumpy roads was one thing but turn the lights out and its a whole other experience especially given we had no idea where we were going and goats just amble across the roads at will. Even the driver started to scare me since he had a very long nail (at least an inch) on his little finger and it was painted red. Something doesn't seem right with that.