Ah, Cambodia, Thailand's much poorer neighbor. Our bus ride to the border was already an ill omen. My companion put his leg up to stretch it on the bus while we were both listening to headphones and his iPhone slipped out without either of us noticing. What he did notice was a man and his friend getting off the bus quickly and then, once off, turning to look where we were sitting as the bus started to pull away. He felt uneasy about that and immediately checked for his phone, which we ended finding out was gone. Luckily for him it was a company phone that he was going to be switching off of soon anyway, so there is really no financial setback--just the inconvenience of not having a phone number for a while.
When we got to the border, our tuk-tuk driver dropped us off at a building that was trying to look like a tourist information building. In typical fashion, it was just a shop trying to make a couple bucks off of tourists and they tried to hurry us into the building. By now we are so used to it we just walked away without a problem, passing all of the signs saying you had to get your visas for Cambodia before you depart Thailand and you should get your visa with them for "bery cheap". Of course, just another silly scam that at this point we are too smart to fall for. Once we crossed the border and were going to get our visas in Cambodia from the officials, there was a section for a passport photo. We paid our visa fee and were told that the fee for not having a photo (we didn't have one) was 100 baht, or $3. However, the man never actually charged us for the photo fee. Then a different official took us aside to tell us to pay the fee, which felt very sketchy. However, I didn't think that officials in a government building would scam us so we paid him. It wasn't until later that we found out that he was in fact scamming us and the passport photo "fee" was a total farce--how frustrating! Obviously it's not the money; it's just the idea that even in official institutions you can't trust them to treat you right.
After we got through to Cambodia we were shuttled to a place that overcharged us about $4 for a taxi ride, which was better than I was expecting. Normally a two hour ride into town is about $10 a person, and we each paid about $14, so really it was an amazing deal compared to America. The tuk-tuk driver that was supposed to take us from the taxi stop to our hostel was obviously ordered to take us to some hotel he makes a commission for, so I told him we already had reservations at our hostel of choice so he would actually take us where we wanted to go instead of insisting we stay somewhere else. Then he tried to get us to buy a tour for today, which I refused.
Long story short, I'm looking forward to a day in Angkor Wat not just for the temples, but to get away from the massive amount of people trying to get in on some of my USD by any means necessary. So far we have been very smart travelers, if I do say so myself. But you always get caught off guard sometimes--and you live and you learn! The Cambodians I've met that work in the restaurants are absolutely lovely, so it's not all of them either. You just have to use your head and adapt as you go.
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