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January 13, 2007 04:55 AM
Bus Scams and Bumpy Roads
SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA - One of my New Years resolutions this year has been to pick up my travelling pace a little. My money won't last forever and there's still a lot of ground to cover between Southeast Asia and Canada. Half a world to be exact.
In light of this resolution, I stayed in Thailand this time around barely long enough to meet up with Gia, a friend from home, and fall for classic Bangkok to Cambodia bus scam. The scam involves offering a ridiculously cheap bus fare to get you on board then extorting money from you by forcing you to buy visa's at inflated prices, exposing you exclusively to their money changers and delivering you to their guesthouse in Siem Reap which of course is inconveniently located outside of town. The whole racket is obviously quite profitable for nearly everyone involved. Easy money like this is rare in poverty stricken Cambodia.
All of my travelling thus far has exposed me to more than a few tourist scams, but these guys have to be commended for their execution of it all. It didn't matter at all that I was on to them right away. I even knew about the scam before I got on board! I simply couldn't resist the rock bottom bus fare. In any case, I did my best to view it all as a game of wits. We rolled with the punches as best as we could and, in the end, managed a few victories out the whole ordeal.
We're now safely in Cambodia, nursing our tail bones after the notoriously horrendous road from the border to this city proved to us the stories we'd heard weren't exaggerated. (150km in 7 hours)
Most people come to Siem Reap for one reason and one reason only: to see the ancient cities and vast Khmer temples of Angkor Wat. We will be no different. They say it's a must see.