A fine Friday afternoon, all classes this week are officially over, what better time to sit down and write.
We have almost come to the end of my travels. As I recall we had just left Guangzhou on a three hour flight surrounded be Egyptians going home to Cairo, heading toward...


Bangkok!

We arrived pretty late, around 11:15, and so we had booked bungalows close to the airport where we stayed for the night. Compared to the hostels we had stayed at in Korea and China this was something else. We had a whole bungalow, which is pretty much like a small apartment, all to ourselves. Complete with the teachings of Buddha and a tv set. Sweet.
That night my foot started to itch pretty heavily....

As we woke up to catch a taxi to the town center I had to rush to the bathroom, wet a towel and put it on my ankle because the itch had gotten unbearable. It was around 6:30 when we woke up and could sleep no more so we just got dressed and headed straight for the town center. We took the sky train to the boat stop and from there a boat up the river closer to our hostel where we hoped to get rooms for the night. From the moment we arrived at the airport we were followed by holy men; when we exited the gate we were surrounded by monks in bright orange garments. There would always be at least one monk in every vehicle we traveled in.
On the boats they even had signs that said something like 'place for monks', and people would stand up and offer them their seats.

After some walking back and forth these new and unfamiliar streets in the blistering heat we finally found our hostel (which I highly recommend !), after having stopped for 30 minutes at a police box and asked for directions. They called all kinds of people on their cell phones and walkie-talkies, finally another police officer arrived on his motorbike, yelling at them that it was right next door! And so it was, we walked 20 meters up the street and saw the hostel sign....
During our long walk I got a weird sensation in my ankle where that damn blasted fly bit me so I started examining it as I sat down. I don't want to be too graphic but I now had two (soon turned into three) huge blisters that stood out probably 2-3 cm from my ankle, filled to the point of almost bursting with ... well yes. Anyway, I punctured them and drained the fluid, after which I applied hand sanitizer to the wound - thinking I had to put alcohol on it to clean it.... needless to say it burned pretty badly once I went back to the 30 degrees outside. It still hasn't quite healed.

Now, we flagged down a tuk tuk and after negotiating the price (cheapest way to travel ever) we zig zagged through the heavy traffic at record braking speeds to the Temple of Dawn (Wat Arun to the Thai people). A magnificent Buddhist temple, it consists of a big tower that you can climb up (with very steep stairs) and admire the view of the city, surrounded by four smaller towers.
The decorations and statues carved into the walls of the tower are amazing, with such small details, it was really worth it to make a trip down there to see it.
Having walked past the flower market and various other places in Bangkok what struck us the most was how colorful the city is. Everywhere you look you can see in your line of sight at least 10+ colors. Even the taxis don a bright pink color. Such a vibrant amazing city!

We went to see some other temples and ended up at the mall where we found a big market and lots of lady boys. Apparently this is very common in Thailand, something I was completely oblivious before my arrival. I wasn't too surprised at this, the real shock would come after dinner, as we were walking back through the market on our way home by sky train.
As I was walking, I quickly glanced to my right and had to do a double-take as I thought I had seen a strange looking tree. Looking back, instead of staring at the dark bark I was expecting, I met the eyes of a woman, begging in the street. Her face was so deformed I found myself gasping and as I recoiled back I felt my eyes water. My heart started to pound and I dragged Svanni into the nearest 7/11 where I reclined up against a wall and 'came down' from the shock. It might sound like I over-reacted but I have never seen anything like this before in my life, even though I have seen all kinds of medical deformities in books/tv before seeing it face to face is something completely different.
This woman's face appeared to have leaked downwards, almost as if it had been burnt horribly and was now drooping towards the ground, in short strands. It is impossible to describe but you could not make out eyes, nose or a mouth, just dark brown sausage-like strands hanging off her face.
I became horrified of seeing her again... and I guess the tears forced themselves to my eyes because my first thought was how horrible it must be to live like that.

On to the 25th of March.
After only two days in Bangkok I found myself thirsting for some more adventure. What had appealed to me the most about the whole trip was getting into Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. As I explained before we had been stripped of two out of those three options so I was eager to make the most of what little time we had left - in Cambodia.
Early in the morning we bought two tickets to Siem Riep and boarded the Playboy bus (it had the bunny on one of the windows) to the boarder. We scouted the waiting room for other foreigners to share a taxi/tuk tuk with once we got into Cambodia and saw one girl traveling alone. Getting off the bus at Aranyapnathet (and they say 'Eyjafjallajökull' is hard?) at the Thai/Cambodian border we quickly went over and asked her to join us on our journey.
And so it was that our party gained another member, Jessica - for that is her name - stayed with us throughout our travel in Cambodia. As I write she should be traveling somewhere in Thailand with her sister who she was going to meet after traveling a bit around Laos.

As soon as we stepped off the bus we were surrounded by an army of tuk tuk drivers, fighting to take us to the border. We stepped out of the crowd, picked up our bags and chose a nice elderly lady and asked her to take us to the border. What she did was drive us to a small three-walled shack with a sign that said 'Cambodia official Visa'. Now, this didn't look at all like a border or a Vise issuance place to me but we went inside anyway, were greeted by the few men there and filled out an application.
Handing over our passports we were then promptly asked for around 50 $ for the Visa, which is more than half the normal price. We argued for about 10-15 minutes and they used all kinds of ways to try to get us to pay, one of them kept yelling at us to go back to Bangkok then if we didn't want to pay, another kept picking up a small carpet knife, opening and closing it as he spoke and the third just got confused when I told him how much we were willing to pay and that he should be smart and just take the money ( a bit more than we were supposed to pay normally). The best part was when they handed us an old book about tourism in Cambodia and pointed to the price for the Visa. It clearly said 20$ but someone had written with a pen in front of it a small "1". We laughed so hard and thanked them for trying...

Not just because of this cheap trick, but just listening to what they were saying and looking at their body language it was obvious that they were lying - they kept talking about how this was different from a government issued Visa and so it was more expensive. We asked them in turn "well, don't you work for the government? You just said so before. Cause if you don't we don't want to do business with you."
They gave us the reply that is now famous in Thailand and Cambodia (we saw it on a couple of T-Shirts and also a hostel by that name) that yes, this was "same same, but different".
We laughed it off and told them we knew what was going on and maybe we should just get their names and report them to the police. I had had enough so I asked for our passports back and sharply said to the man who was telling our only other option was to go back to Thailand that then that is what we would do.

As I turned around I thought that maybe this wasn't the smartest thing to do, threaten and yell at these men as they might as well use that carpet knife at any moment and god knows what other weapons they were equipped with and discard our bodies behind the shack with all the other defiant tourists but I quickly shrugged the notion off. Although at that moment I noticed that my hands had been shaking as I yelled back at them that this is what we will pay and to give us the Visa.

I had no idea where we were supposed to go next as we were so ill prepared so I just went back inside the tuk tuk and apologized to Svanni and Jessica as I didn't know how we were supposed to get our Visas now but the lady took us straight to the real border this time. Phew!
We paid the 20$, got in and were greeted by three men with government 'badges' who took us on a free shuttle bus to the bus station. On the way one of them would not stop talking and laughing, telling us about how good tourism in Cambodia has become and how they have this job now to greet tourists and 'protect them' from scams. At the bus station we exchanged our money into riels because this nice man told us that you can't really use dollers or baht... funny, and I just read online that you can... well whatever. So we exchanged most of our money. (turns out you can use all three)

Now, it was getting dangerously close to seven p.m. and I had no intention to stay any longer at this border town of Poipet as I had read carefully about its notorious reputation online. The bus however, had stopped running until the afternoon on the next day so we would have to take a taxi. At this point the warning bells in my head started chiming vigorously - how convenient for the taxi driver - and almost drowned my thoughts when he went on to give us the price of the taxi. We started to bargain with him and he decided to give us a 2 dollar discount. Wow.
We told them we were going to go outside and check other taxis - this is when they became desperate and followed us, increasing the discount until they had started to ask how much we wanted to pay.
Now, its not normal to have to bargain with government officials about the price of a taxi, I thought, so I tried my best to shrug them off. We tried at least... They were stuck to us like glue, pleading to us to take the taxi as it was 'very dangerous' walking these streets and there were no other taxis because it was so late. Apparently scare tactics are very popular in these parts. Finally we found a taxi in the streets which took us to the city for less than half of what they had offered us.
I later found out that these men are running a tourist scam, sponsored by the government. It was quite the feeling, standing in the dark in the middle of the street in Poipet, known for nothing but gambling and brothels, having been advised not to stay there for any longer than necessary, with no means of getting away.

During the four hour drive into Siem Reap we got to know each other a bit better. Only a few minutes into the drive, lightning lit up the inside of the taxi. For the rest of the ride the lightnings turned the dark skies brilliantly white. 
Cambodia was bidding us welcome.

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For the riveting conclusion (I hope), tune in next week.