Scoundrels and Scams: The Thai-Cambodian Border

There will be more pictures in the next post - the border wasn't really a stop and take pictures kind of a place.

It had been three days of solo travel through Bangkok, and it was time to move on.  I should’ve been to bed early, as I was catching the morning train to the Cambodia border, but it was the Euro’s!  As a result, when my alarm went off at 4:45am, I was looking for any excuse to stay another day in Thailand.  I looked at flight prices to Phnom Penh, finding them at a tempting $130 USD.  But if I was to break my budget after only three days, what could the rest of the trip have in store? 

            Reluctantly, I found myself at Bangkok’s Hua Lamphong train station catching the 5:55am to Aranyaprathet, a tiny Thai town close to the border.  Planning to catch up on sleep, I climbed into the old carriage of a train.  Inside, large open square windows were between two benches with minimal cushioning.  Baggage was crammed on overhead platforms, holding anything from shopping from the capital, to traveller’s bags or even baskets of groceries.  Once again, I was thanking myself for travelling light.  As I looked around the ancient and grime coated carriage, I wondered to myself how long had this train been running; since the Khmer Rouge ran Cambodia, or the King; since the Americans or the French in Vietnam?  The only certain thing was that it was old.  Creaking rotating fans blew a light breeze that would later be an illusory relief from the sunlight blasting in through the window.  As the train begin to rattle its way down the tracks, I dozed to the prattle of passengers in the carriage.

            Momentary interruptions in my sleep revealed parts of Bangkok I couldn’t have seen on my own two feet and later, the benches around me filling with passengers.  It wasn’t long before we were trundling down the tracks towards the border with sunlight blasting in through the window and expanses of rice paddies corralling the tracks as they crossed the country.  Sometimes, when I’m travelling, I feel like a lizard.  There were two reasons why this time: firstly, I was dirty and dishevelled with four days growth on my face, and secondly, a granola bar was all I had eaten and my body was entering a reduced state of lethargy that only a cold-blooded creature could relate to.  At least I knew we were getting close to the border as the six hour journey neared its end.

            Stepping off the train in Aranyaprathet, I knew I was still about 6 km from the Thai-Cambodian border – and I knew that people of scrupulous character were what waited for me there.  I hired a tuk-tuk – a motorcycle pulling a wooden carriage – to the border.  Inevitably, he took a turn that I could tell wasn’t towards the border.  Here we go, I thought.  He led me to a bare office on the side of the road with the words “Embassy of the Kingdom of Cambodia” emblazoned across the back wall.  Inside, nothing to indicate it was an embassy.  No uniforms, not even a computer.  A suave salesman handed me authentic visa application papers, and three foreigners at the adjacent desk were eating it up.  I thought that maybe this spot was charging the correct prices.  When I asked how much, he told me 1400 Thai Baht, or 40 USD (both of which are higher than the official 20-25 USD).  I got out of there quick and my driver took me to another, more official spot.  Inside, there were computers, lazy people shuffling about, pictures of the King and no one seemed to care I was there.  A disinterested official behind a glass window glanced up and told me $30 USD.  It seemed everyone was on the take.

            I had read that Khmer’s are very reluctant to show any negative emotions, preferring to smile their way through incendiary situations rather than lose face.  I slipped $25 USD into my passport as I handed it over and he opened it, looked at it, and processed my visa.  Just another guy trying to make $5 off a careless tourist; I couldn’t blame him.  Back in the tuk-tuk and covering the last few kilometres to the border, my driver tried to charge me an extra 100 baht because I didn’t buy the sham visa from his scamming friend.  I held my ground and gave him the agreed upon 80 baht. 

            Now, it was time to walk across the second border in my life – the first being the Malaysia – Brunei border.  The research I had done assured me it wouldn’t be as easy this time around. Aranyaprathet on the Thai side is full of people trying to sell inflated visas and sometimes outright fake visas to unsuspecting and unobservant tourists.  Poipet, on the Cambodian side, runs a different gamble; cheap and gaudy casinos have popped up to cater to Thai’s.  The casinos, unbelievably, are closer to Thailand than Cambodian immigration.  Outside, on the streets of Poipet, scam artists can’t sell visas, so instead a complicated taxi monopoly has developed and scoundrels try to funnel tourists into dramatically overpriced cabs departing to almost anywhere in the country.  After getting my departure stamp from Thailand, I walked out into the street heading towards Cambodia.  A chorus echoed after me; “you have visa,” “you need visa,” “where you going,” “where you from.”  They were all empty statements hoping to hook me into a conversation with the end result of my wallet being lighter rather than real questions.

As I waited in the shoddy immigration stand sandwiched between Cambodian casinos, it suddenly dawned on me; I hadn’t read about a “Cambodian Consulate” in Aranyaprathet.  Just where the hell was I when I handed over $25 for a “visa”?  Panicky, I waited in line suspecting my visa was a fake and I would be fined or turned around and stuck in a hellish purgatory between Thailand and Cambodia.  A hand over of my passport, a smile while my picture was taken and a stamp on my visa later, I was officially in Cambodia – it turned out my instincts were right: the lazy characters and disinterested uniforms were truly a government post and the out of the way office was legitimate.             

Next step for the day: find my way to Battambang, a place that no other foreigner seemed to be going to..

72 Hours in Bangkok

Back in Singapore after my most recent trip, it took some time for my retrospective eyes to glaze over.  Glaze complete, I can know look back on my trip and hopefully be able to recount a little of what happened, show a few pictures and an entertaining story or two.  The first place I landed after taking off from Singapore’s Changi airport was on the tarmac at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport.  I’ve become something of an expert on airports, despite flying for the first time in 2009.  Like Up In The Air, it’s passport out, no checked baggage, belt off and pockets empty as I approach security. 

After arriving, I took the public transport Skytrain, an above ground train running through the city.  It wasn’t until I was in the heart of Bangkok and close to my hostel that I first stepped into the city itself.  Travelling light, I had cut out my rain jacket and didn’t bother with an umbrella – of course I ended up walking to my hostel in the pouring rain of a tropical rainy season storm.  Anyhow, as I discovered over three days, Bangkok’s fearsome reputation has become illusory.  Instead, the sprawling metropolis is more of an international centre with all the luxuries to boot.  That’s not to say there isn’t a distinct Thai flavour running through the city with interesting things to see, but just that Bangkok isn’t the depraved and deadly capital one would be led to believe. 

I discovered the city at my own pace.  Some highlights were, in no particular order: the Grand Palace, Wat Po (a sprawling Buddhist temple with a massive and golden reclinging Buddha), Chatuchak Market (by some estimates, the largest outdoor market in the world) and Khao San Road (the filthy and fetching backpacker’s quarter).  I was able to keep it all pretty cheap, with an $18 room, less than $10 a day on food, and maybe $5-10 on transport and entrance fees.  At the end of the day, Bangkok was not what I was hoping for and it would be later in Cambodia that I would find the stories worth sharing and the lessons worth learning.

Above you have the iconic grit of Bangkok.  Below are two pictures of sights around the Grand Palace and its compound; firstly, the palace itself, then a nearby unexplained yet spectacular building.

       These dudes were all over the city.  Buddhist kingdom and all.

Bamboo for scaffolding on an old temple’s spire..  I wouldn’t go for a climb.

Here is a view from the Chao Phraya River, which bisects Bangkok and is busy with commuter ferry boats and shipping barges alike.

The two pictures above were taken near Chatuchak Market, a massive market with everything from clothes to wholesale to food and everything possible in between.  The first: a view from the Skytrain nearby of the fringes of the market (note the extreme amount of people).  The second: a finger-pickin’ son of a gun I happened across in the market.

Last, but not least.  A 75 cent Thai street omelette that became my dinner – fried eggs, rice, chili, grease: who knew?

Thailand & Cambodia

10 days: Bangkok, Battambang, Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. The bag gets smaller every time.

Food!

Struggling to find inspiration on something to write about, I began to think about the last few months.  It's really easy to write when you're life is full of excitement; trips, new places and strange experiences.  When you are saving your money for a flight back home and impending unemployment, writing suddenly becomes a lot harder to do.  Without the exuberance of expenditure, one needs to find other things to write about.  Things that might be mundane to me could be interesting to an audience of people on the other side of the world.  So this is how I started looking over my shoulder for something to write about.  It became very clear: food!

More blog posts will follow in the next few weeks; I'll be heading to Bangkok for a few days and then exploring Cambodia for a week (Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Angkor, etc.).  But for now, here's a chronicle of food ranging from Manhattan and Singapore to Borneo and beyond.  *From January 7th, 2012 - June 2nd, 2012.

Korean - Mexican fusion is taking off through food trucks across the U.S.  It sounds strange, but I assure you, it's totally awesome.  Stumbled upon this truck walking around East Village one winter day in January.

The goods: three tacos, ranging from pork and beef to vegetarian, with everything from kimchi to cilantro inside.

After eating strange Korean pizzas for a calender year, I was about ready to give up on the dietary staple.  A trip to Little Italy reopened my eyes.  Goodbye shrimp and sweet potato, hello proper pizza!

Here I am living out of a broom cupboard of a hostel room in Little India, Singapore.  Tired of the glamorous restaurants lining Race Course Road and Serangoon Road, I ducked into the ugliest and busiest spot I could find.  I ordered some Briyani -- the fried rice you see -- and everything was slapped down onto a freshly cut banana leaf.  Hastily looking around, and seeing a room full of Indians gracefully eating with their hands, I clumsily dug in. With both hands.  An unmanageable amount of curry on my hands later, I realize some of the men are unabashedly staring at me.  I then realize everyone is eating with only their right hand.  I would only later realize the left hand is only for "sanitary purposes."  I left the place with, as they say, a veritable "shit-eating grin" on my face.    

A type of Thosai.  Thosai is Indian; a flat, thin and crispy fried bread with some masala inside.  Then, a balanced variety of dips and curries to eat with.

This is Yong Tau Foo from the hawker centre (food court) near my school.  This is what I would consider proper Singaporean food.  It took me a while to work up the courage to try it, since it looked complicated (it's not).  In a nutshell: you pick seven or more ingredients from the shelf, put it in a bowl, give the bowl to the lady, tell her what kind of noodles you want (egg noodles, rice vermicelli, some other things), tell her what sauce you want or if you want soup and then pay.

The finished product of Yong Tau Foo: fried bean curd, broccoli, a spinach variant, stuffed chili pepper, egg noodles and a fiery curry laksa sauce.

Satay being grilled over charcoal on the main street of Brunei's capital, Bandar Seri Begawan.  Satay is found in a variety of forms throughout Malaysia, Borneo, Indonesia (I think) and Singapore.

Still in Brunei.  This is gelatinous goop eaten paired with an equally nasty and pungent chili sauce.  It's called Ambuyat and it only rose to prominence during World War II when the Japanese were occupying and food was scarce.  It's literally made from tree sap (don't be confused - not at all like maple syrup).

This is from a 24 hour Muslim / Indian eatery very near my apartment in Ang Mo Kio.  It's totally awesome, cheap and delicious.  The meal is plain rice with vegetables and beef and turmeric.  The real star is the bread in the background; roti prata.  Prata is a delicious and simple fried bread -- with a choice of filling such as egg or onion -- to be dipped in curry (on the left in the picture).  Prata makes my illustrious list of the top five foods I've ever eaten.

This is barbecued sting ray.  Yes, sting ray.  I kid you not, BBQ stingray is one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted.  Cooked over fire, the white meat easily pulls away from the charred carapace of cartilage and bone.  Smothered with sambal, a chili paste, the meat is both smoky and spicy.

Not much meat left on the stingray's flap after we had gotten ahold of it!

  Proper fried chicken wings in Singapore.

Last, but certainly not least; a proper Cantonese lunch of leftovers from the night before.  White fungus on the left, with pork and egg.  Cucumber and black fungus on the right.  Hidden in the pot in the middle: pork belly.  Don't ask me what white or black fungus is.