Corupt Cambodia
March 15th, 2008
The words “corrupt bastards” accidentally fell from my mouth at the border crossing from Thailand into Cambodia. Every head from the border security personnel spun around faster than the band Dead or Alive. Mark’s eyes grew bigger than bill gates pocketbook, as he bit his own tongue, in hope I would bite mine. The sound of a pin drop singly filled the now quiet void, I mumbled something about US politics and they turned away.
Mark and I have been avoiding being totally ripped off for the entire trip. Sure, we pay the white boy tax for food, tickets, rides, and rooms in every third world country. Hell, we even expect it. But what we weren’t prepared for that day, were the streets to all be one way, the scam way…
After sleeping in a Bangkok bus station, we arrived at the edge of Thailand on a morning bus, pretty exhausted. Now, the easiest way to cross into Cambodia is to take a motorized taxi thing called a tuk-tuk from the border town to the border crossing a few kilometers away. Forced to pay the “fixed white-boy price” of $2.00 for a 50 cent ride and we were regret-ably on our merry way. As usual, the non-English speaking woman driver made several attempts to pawn us off at so-called “tourist agencies”, which we quickly thwarted, causing her to give up and actually take us to the border. In my experience most tuk-tuk drivers were absolute pros, probably because they all think they are Indy car drivers — darting about at eye-tearing speed, shifting lanes into narrow corridors without looking, while repeatedly cussing out other drivers. This amature drove like a snail. Which, caused her engine to be under-revved and it broke down halfway to the border. For about ten minutes, she fiddled around the engine like a dirty blind man feeling up smurfette. (sorry, just wanted the visual) Her failed attempts caused another experienced older driver to stop and fix it for her. It took him about a half a minute, to fix her mistakes, and get us running again. So, after an extended 30 minute ride five kilometers down the road, we were at a border gate.
Right before the border was a gate and roadblock. There were three men sat, with common Cambodia visa application forms and a table to fill out the information. Other tourists were sitting filling out the information, so we sat. After reviewing the form and what the men had to say, we deduced that this was a fake post and continued walking further down the road. They followed, yelling at us “No go this way yet! You need VISA first!”, not leaving our side until we reached the real border.
We changed our Thai money at the border for Cambodia’s semi-currency, the US dollar, which was going to purchase our 20 dollar Cambodia visa’s. After getting our Thailand exit stamp, we marched into Cambodian immigration to purchase our visa’s and enter the country. (Oh BTW… I hate paying for visa’s — We’re going to charge you for spending money in our country. It just sucks.)
“40 dollars for each visa,” said the official brown suited immigration officer.
“uh… shouldn’t it be 20 dollars each?” we responded calmly.
“No, this border is 40, others are 20.”
“But it says 20 dollars right at the top of the visa.”
“Nope 40 dollars.”
“Fine… here you go.”
“NO, pay in Thai baht.”
“What? This country uses dollars, We have dollars…”
“Baht only!”
“Isn’t this Cambodia?”
“Yes.”
There was only one stand to change money and they charged a much higher commission than anybody outside the border, most likely in cahoots with the officials. Getting ripped off by a government official left a sour taste in our mouths and we both thought, “Angkor Wat better be fantastic.”
The Cambodian border town was a real (excuse my french) shit hole. Most people warned us to not judge Cambodia by this town. What they forgot to tell us was, there is no real form of public transportation anywhere, its all private. After walking around town for an hour or two, we finally got the scoop from a local who lost his job because the government shut down the regular bus station. I couldn’t quite understand the reason why, but it sounded immoral and corrupt to me.
Speaking of corrupt, the only road out of town is in no better condition than a back country bumpy dirt road, worse than most dirt roads in Plumas county. (The road up Mt. Huff is a breeze compared to this thing.) Most other main highways throughout Cambodia are now paved. Why not this major thoroughfare you ask?. We were informed that the road is kept in terrible shape because an un-named airline pays the government large sums of money, in order to influence more flights out of Thailand.
Hopping in a taxi with a bunch of locals on Mr. Toads Wild Road, proved to show how insane this country is. We didn’t ask how much the others paid, but I’m sure it was absolutely nothing as our 16 dollars purchased the entire cab. Paying for everybody’s taxi was no problem for us. The problem came when they only kicked us white boys out of the taxi before reaching the town center, forcing us to ride with a tuk-tuk driver to a hotel of his choosing.
Which actually lead to the only good thing this day… To our surprise, his choice, was actually a fantastic, very nice, affordable, centralized guesthouse.
Entry Filed under: Cambodia
