Bye Bye Bangkok

5:50 am for some reason didn't come near as early as it does in the States. By 7:40 we were checked out of the hotel and in a mini van on the way to Cambodia. Hello? Does anyone out there know anything about Cambodia? If you do and didn't warn us then you're in for trouble when we return!

I had expected today to be a quiet day with not much to journal but that shows what a dumb American I am. On the ride to the border we were traveling with 3 people from the UK, 3 from Italy and 2 from Idaho. It was a quiet restful 5 hr drive. The countryside looked remarkably like rural Arkansas. Rice fields were plentiful and little stands could be seen along the highway selling mountains of bags of rice for cheap. There were corn fields, hay fields and sugar cane fields and familiar looking trees and woods in between. There were two stops to refuel, use the bathroom and stretch. In both places the men's room consisted of a row of urinals along the backside of a wall; ONE wall. While it was a bit of a shock, the landscaping was pretty.

We unloaded at our final stop before the border at 12:30 pm and waited at an outdoor restaurant while men hurriedly gathered our passports, travel and hotel information. We each paid them one fee of about $50 for their services and that included the one month visa for Cambodia. We wondered if that was too high but soon we changed our minds and decided it was quite the bargain.

After about an hour we piled back in the van and unloaded a few minutes later at the border to Cambodia...