Mad Dash For the Border

I had made it back to Sihanoukville with just enough time to celebrate the birthdays of my friends Jimmy, Danny and Janna Jupiter. Although the hostel had a real bar with a dance floor, the occasional fire dancers, a pool and a high platform to jump into the pool from, all the cool kids spent the night at the “Charity Café” after hours. Jimmy and Danny had finished their shifts at the coffee bar with all of us hanging around sipping on cups of whiskey and Cokes. I got the honors of plugging my computer into their speaker system and having a nostalgic night as the DJ. We ended up having a much bigger party at the coffee bar than was going on inside the hostel. In the interest of transparency, I have to include the detail that an elderly Irish bloke showed up. He was a friend of Jimmy and Danny’s and he had brought a little birthday gift for them: tabs of acid. They had a good time with the stuff, but I wasn't about to touch it. He lived in Cambodia, so I had to wonder if he was making his own locally or had smuggled a big supply during his last trip home. Everyone was up late into the night, but I had a big day of travel the following morning, so I had to call it a night around 4.

Three or four hours later, I had a serious mission: get to Bangkok! On a map, it does not appear that far, because it really isn’t. Unless you take a tourist bus that goes straight there, it is kind of complicated from Sihanoukville. Sometimes my aversion to using tourist facilities is a matter of cutting off my nose to spite my face. Sometimes, though, the face will at least get a good story out of it, though, and turns out, noses aren’t that cool anyway. So I stuck to my guns and got the first local bus going in the direction of Phnom Penh. This was seriously lame, because nobody wanted to let me on for cheaper than the full price to Phnom Penh, even though I only needed to go a quarter of the way. They weren’t leaving full, and they still pick up people along the way. It made no sense. After a few buses left without me, I gave up and paid the full fare. I disembarked after an hour, at a junction with a small road that leads to the border near Krong Koh Kong (pretty cool name, huh? I mean, other than the acronym.) There were a few taxis hanging out at the junction, insisting that I should pay them to take me on the four-hour ride to the border because there were no buses. This was highly improbable, but I actually had no information on whether there was any public transport that could actually get me to the border. I walked down the narrow, rural road, and stuck my thumb out to the occasional passing car. A couple kids from a nearby house wandered out and stared for a while, then started waving and yelling, “hello!” I would respond, and they would respond, and I would respond, and they would respond, I would respond, and they would respond, I would respond, and they would respond, I would respond, and they would respond, I would respond, and they would respond, I would respond, and they would respond, I would respond, and they would respond. After about 88 rounds of hello exchanges, I realized they were not getting bored, and I was. More importantly, though, they were distracting me from the task at hand. The task at thumb. I ignored them for about nine seconds, but they thought I couldn’t hear them and got louder, closer, and crept from the realm of cute into that of obnoxious. Luckily I was soon rescued by a van. Well a bus van, so I had to pay the fare, but I was getting a little worried anyway. I still had about 20 hours before my flight left, which was enough, but any hold up could be devastating.

The van was incredibly cramped and I was very conscious of my enormous size and even enormouser size of my pack. My company on this journey was mostly country folk and a lot of elderly with worn faces that spoke volumes about the hardship they had endured in their lives. We wound through the hilly countryside, stopping to drop off and pick up people on occasion. We crossed through parts of the Cardamom Mountains, which rewarded us with much more dramatic scenery than I had seen in the rest of Cambodia or Thailand.

After about four or five hours, we reached the town of Krong Koh Kong. I was still a few miles from the border, but this was the end of the line. I was hoping for some sort of public transport to the border, but since there is not much of a town there, it seemed that if there was anything, it was extremely rare. I asked around, mostly looking for someone that could understand me, but also hoping to find some information on how to get to the border. Eventually I found a bunch of guys hanging out in a bar watching a soccer game. The one who seemed most capable in English was a relatively large man in fatigues. While traveling I have encountered a lot of police officers as well as soldiers. I have had mixed experiences with police officers, but soldiers have always been nothing but kind and helpful to me. This man was no exception. He said if I paid for the gas, he would take me all the way to the border. Next thing I knew, I was on the back of his motorcycle, trying not to let my heavy pack tip me off the back, speeding over a bridge toward the border at Hat Lek.

Things were moving smoothly, and I reached the border by 4 or 5 pm. Just like I had seen at the northern border, the Cambodian side of the border had a few upscale casinos and hotels to attract the Thais across the border, where they could legally gamble. I got in line to pass through the Cambodian customs and immigration booth. They checked over my passport and everything was going smoothly. I was about to be given my exit stamp and motioned along, when all of a sudden a second official came to take a look at my passport. He seemed to have found a problem. Of course, I thought. Although I have nothing but affection for Cambodia as a country, their border officials have bad reputations, and they had tried to rip me off when I entered the country. They summoned me inside my office and directed a clerk sitting on chair, using a stool as a writing service, to write me a fine for over-staying my visa. I demanded to know what the problem was. They pointed at the stamp on my passport and said that my visa expired on the 22^nd. It was the 23^rd. I pointed at the actual visa page, and showed that it said that it expired on the 23^rd. I was not about to be pushed around for some sort of bribe disguised as a fine. The clerk wrote out a ticket and a receipt for $5 (it’s a standard $5/day charge for overstaying) and I refused to pay. Every time I challenged them, they would bring somebody else over, have them look over my passport, and come to the conclusion that I still owed $5. I was so angry, because it was so plain to me, that Cambodia visa said it expired on the 23^rd and I was not overstaying. Without explanation, they kept pointing at the entrance stamp on the next page that said “22^nd”. Surely that was a mistake, no? Turns out it wasn’t, and I had to figure out on my own that I was actually at fault. The visa expiration date signified amount of time I had to enter the country. From the time of entry, though, I would only get 30 days. I was still angry, though, for their confusing system. To make matters worse, as I stormed out of there, I slipped in some mud, and fell all the way down, covering the entire right half of my body in mud. I still had to fly in a matter of hours, and I was about to top myself in my record for most unkempt airline passenger.

On the other side of the border, I waited for a van to fill with Thai gamblers so we could get to Trat, the nearest town with bus connections to Bangkok. It was an hour of waiting, and I met an elderly German expat who lived in Cambodia. He said he ran a lodge up in the Cardamom mountains and they offered all sorts of adventures including hiking and mountain biking. He seemed content with his Cambodian life, especially his wife, standing nearby, who was half his age. “She’s really good,” he said with a wink that made me puke in my mouth just a bit.

Being back in Thailand did not excite me. Everyone seemed rich and things appeared much more modern and developed. At this point, Thailand was just a convenient bridge between Cambodia and India. The wait was about an hour and I was in the luxurious air-con van with comfortable seats. After another hour, we arrived at the bus station in Trat. I found that the next bus to Bangkok would be in a couple hours at 10:00 pm. My room for error was growing thinner, but I was still on target to make my flight. I had spent a night in Trat five years earlier and while it was mostly just a transit hub, I had found it a pleasantly quiet town. I went across the street from the station and found an empty little food court. There were only two stalls open, so I picked one randomly. I asked which dish was the spiciest and ordered it. The food provided some solace for being back in Thailand. It was spicy, and delicious, something that I could rarely say for a casual cheap meal in Cambodia. I made sure to savor my last Thai meal, and just punish my tongue as I sweated through it.

Through fits of sleep I approached Bangkok in the large, chilly vessel. I had thought that it would take me all the way to the airport, but I guess I had been misinformed. The station I was dropped off at, though, did have connections to the airport that wouldn’t start for a couple hours. I waited around, watching the few haggard souls that wandered the station, scavenging for food or good luck.

I finally arrived at the airport at around six in the morning. It was four hours before my flight. I timed it perfectly. I had enough time to collect myself, send some e-mails, and relax with some music before boarding my plane. This felt like another big moment in my trip. It was hard to fully realize what was about to happen when I boarded my plane. This was the culmination of nearly five years of anticipation. Half a decade ago, I had come alive during my trip to India. It was an experience that had changed me forever. I had opened my eyes to the world and never looked back. It was almost like taking a pilgrimage to my own personal place of enlightenment. I had been waiting to get back here for years, but kept getting sidetracked. Now, the gods of travel had summoned me for my return.