Thailand Trail Friday Friday 20th January. On the road to Siem Reap

 Time to move south east to Cambodia. It's a 9 hour journey by coach with the Cambodian border roughly half way. The coach departure is at 7-45 am,  but the departure point is some distance from our hotel. We need to make a 45 minute taxi ride to get there, moreover the morning rush hour in Bangkok is horrendous. 

The night before departure I speak to the hotel staff to arrange for them to organise a taxi to be at the hotel for a 6-15 leave. This should give us plenty of time to get the coach. What can go wrong?..........

Well, when we come down to the lobby no-one had arranged the taxi. The staff seemed to think that it was a bit of a joke! They phoned for a "grab" taxi (like Uber) which appears to be 10 minutes away.  Fifteen minutes later the taxi is still 10 minutes away and we are getting very concerned. 6-45 we decide to walk to the main street and hail a taxi ourselves. This we do successfully three times,  but each time the driver either doesn't understand the address in English or just doesn't fancy it. 

Back at the hotel now 7 o'clock and our chances looking slim, I get the hotel to phone the coach company to say we may be late. They allow us 10 minutes grace and will then leave. 

We have a taxi and it's 7-15. This is going to be touch and (probably not) go! We have been here before, remember Bartumi to catch the only train to Tbilisi? A nail biting journey with a thousand red traffic lights. You daren't look at your watch. We reached the bus station at two minutes to 8am, 13 minutes after the coach should have left. The coach is still there!! What a nice coach! What a beautiful coach! It's the best coach we've ever seen.

They have saved us the front seats and have croissants and cold coffee for us. We are going to get to Siem Reap.

The beautiful coach with the flexible leaving time and below we are actually on the road. 

Border crossing time and we must get out of the coach and walk over, previously we stopped at the Cambodian embassy to pay our tourist tax, ie $35 for a visa. 

The Cambodian border control had six desks available to check immigration but today only two were manned. There were, of course at least six more uniformed officials keeping an eye on things but not apparently working. It took more than an hour to get through and back to the bus. Then we waited another half hour for a couple who seemed to get further delayed at the crossing. Below probably the most modern services that we stopped at. This was still in Thailand and part of the Amazon Cafe group. 

Romantic, but much more primitive this was the stopping place in Cambodia, halfway to Siem Reap. 

The hotel in Siem Reap was quite modern with a heavy teak wood influence. 

.....and a rather inviting swimming pool. Tomorrow we  have the Angkor Wat tour organised.