From the beachbars of Haad Rin (although I think the boss was slightly surprised when he appeared to pay me at my palatial surroundings of Neptune Villas where we'd been staying since the incident with the giant Geckos and Lizzies phantom fever) I said my goodbyes and set off for Bangkok which I finally managed to reach after being left to loiter around various restaurants for random intervals of time (whether the motivation was nepotistic or solely commision was unclear). The frequent breaks did have one positive aspect; i realised that the normal privacy rules for anglophones are suspended in transit and so they provided the perfect opportunity to chat people up enough to have a few friendly faces to share a drink with, or in cases of exceptional luck, a room.
Dave looked like he had been bifuricated across asian markets and indeed had a veritable array of travellers diseases, largely picked up from swimming in the world's filthiest river (putting VangVien to shame); the Ganges (or as dave would have it 'the worlds holiest river'), which despite having gifted him nothing but a few chronic chest problems, eye infections and skin trouble he gleefully recounted - floating remains of cobra victims and all. However, once we'd woken up (we arrived early; 5am) we managed to bump into someone he'd met on a previous bangkok sortie and so we ended up in a taxi shouting furiously to 'follow that taxi.' The Overstay was simple but otherwise perfectly formed. It was really a sort of hippy community that had somehow found itself swallowed by Bangkok and couldn't get up the effort to leave but it was perfectly charming, despite the missing window panes, general disrepair and ratsize hole in our wall. Higher up where the digs of the long term residents who were only too happy to help us out and dispense a little expat knowledge or start throwing paint across the room at broken mannequins (not as mad as it seems; there was an entire floor dedicated to this kind of creative outlet) and seeing as communal meals where the order of the day it was rather difficult to actually build up the effort to leave and venture out into Bangkok.
Aside from nightly Ko San road trips (which only made me more glad that I'd not stayed there), I made it out to the smaller temples and then to the Grand Palace and Wat Pho (even if the main attraction here was it's role as the home of Thai massage - I promise I did attend my massage sesion via the reclining Buddha!). The great tuktuk scam still exists but, given you dont have a tight time schedule, can be worked to your advantage - a typical outing for me entailed jumping in and saying 'how many shops before 'insert destination' for free?' eventually after impressive feats of acting prowess you would emerge without an overpriced pillow case and the tuktuk driver would be grinning widely as he was in receipt of a gasoline token or two depending on the quality of feined interest, at this point if you were lucky you'd be taken to your desired destination.
Alternative transport became a pet love of ours and instead we often found ourselves in the back of BB gun vans, more comfortably a mattress home delivery service and occasionally when we were feeling energetic we would walk down the main street tripping over our phonetically learnt Thai to get to the local ferry and over to the old town.
Leaving Bangkok was all a bit of a rush and due to a rather late night and the storm the last morning, intended for a fake handbag shop, got off to a belated start before being prematurely terminated by the announcement that the last train to Arranyapraphet had been cancelled so I would have to forgo the Jimmy Choo and jump on the train waving hasty goodbyes to Danny and Dave. (Danny had also been on the bus and had proved himself a little more capable of being ontime, possibly due to a combination of his owning both a watch and a phone and his occupation as a marine).
For a princely sum of 48baht (about a dollar) I was bumping along to the border - sadly not with the expected local livestock but instead an assortment of school children who typically traveled about 2-4hours on the train, presumably daily. The local train did have a few advantages - largely because the usual abrupt service of the coach companies wasn't hassling, shouting and stealing away your (very, overused, thin, scratchy, in all likelihood diseased) blanket the second you got comfy. Once there I was treated to a very salubrious border crossing.
Swanthep travel company, if anyone has the misfortune to be offered their services, was distinctly dodge - in fact I don't believe it was a legitimate travel company at all. However, after racing tuktuks, pointing out that the visa charge was not 1200baht but 700, being ushered off to get out money (whereupon I asked if I could instead post some letters), being thrown inside a casino whilst they sped off elsewhere to get our visas (despite the visa office being closed at 7pm; most likely the extra visa charge was a bribe to the official who was stamping visas out of hours), the strangeness didn't end on the other side of the border where the gaudy surroundings of vice city Poipet only amplified the goings on. We ended up driving over a roundabout to find the 2 other western boys who'd also been through a similar rigmarole but left in the middle of a motorway before reaching Siem Riep. Once in Siem Riep it took a good while for the included driver to actually get me to my destination rather than the one with the best commission (actually i later found out the real reason nicknamed the Bus Game) which was perhaps not the best option as I was to wake up not that many hours later to a new unwanted, very rodential, bedfellow.
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