Monday, August 08, 2005

Cambodia in a Day, Not!


Today I planned to do a Roadtrip to Cambodia, apparently there is a huge Market on the Thai Border, run by Cambodians and is incredibly cheap. I went with a good friend from Bangkok, "Aon" and a mate over from England, "Dave". We set off in Aon's car at around seven in the morning, unfortunately Aon had forgotton the way, by some fluke of nature we headed towards the Border and hoped to find the Market. While we where there we planned to go over the Border to Cambodia, a country I'd vowed never to visit again, but hey, it was a day out.
We stopped at a Garage half way to answer the call of nature, here I found the worst toilets ever, worse than any Dodgy Turkish restaurant or portacabin at Glastonbury, luckily I only had to go for a pee, dave on the other hand had to Squat and suffer the smell and mosquitoes. No Way! it wasn't even funny.
Five hours it took us to reach Rong Rean Market and set about getting over the border and into Cambodia. Unfortunately the que was full of Backpackers and Ex-pats on Visa Runs, it was going to take an hour to get out of Thailand, then another hour to go to Cambodia with probaly another hour to get back in Thailand, all for the sake of a visa stamp and another country ticked off for Dave, we took this photo of Cambodia and began to do the Market. I was pleased, I dont like visiting third world countries.
The Market is Huge, so big, it's best to hire bikes to get around the place! However as always happens, not everything goes to plan, 90% of the market is second hand clothes, Given to Cambodia by charities from the US, Christ there was some shite, Shoes, underwear, shirts and trousers. It was a whole cottage industry at this place, the Cambodians are happen to work for Bugger all and a poke in the eye pie, everything was so cheap. I made my only purchase of the day from the Handicraft part near the top side of the Market, a fantastic handmade hemp Hammock, cant wait to set it up. It cost me a whole 70bht or £1.00. Dave made the purchase of the Day, a whole corn on the cob, freshly cooked and buttered for 5bht or 8p. You could'nt fault it. We found a loads better way back, even though a torrential storm folloed us all the way, but a cool 3-1/2 hours later I was back at the Condo, just another day in Thailand!!

1 comment:

BangkokRam said...

TGB, i've had several SMS and conversation's with people and India seems to be coming out as the number one spot in the world for the worse crappers in the world! Although the the bogs at Boothferry Park won an award for being the smelliest.