Travellers opting to bus their way across the 400 miles from Bangkok to Cambodian capital Phnom Penh leave themselves open to a range of scams and rip offs, but this was a fact I didn’t across until I was already onboard. Myself and my other passengers realised something might be up after discovering references to the Bangkok-Phnom Penh ‘scam bus’ in a copy of the Lonely Planet travel guide and as things turned out, the book’s passage gave a stunningly accurate account of what happened.
Rather than stopping at petrol stations on the main route we would cut across some dirt road and arrive at the home of a friend of the driver or one of his two buddies travelling with him. There would be an outdoor squat toilet and a wooden table sitting in the sun with a few packets of crisps and warm cans of coke and the driver would pick up a commission for bringing customers. At one re-routed stop off the trio disembarked and returned soon afterwards carrying a moped which they lugged on board and plonked down in the middle of the isle.
We stopped two kilometres before the border town of Poipet in a shabby eatery with a Thai cop car parked outside. After some discussion between the policeman and our trusty guides, they asked us for our passports and the equivalent of €50 in Thai Baht saying that they would arrange our visas once we hit the border. Cambodian visas cost $20 and are payable in US currency, which is what is used in Cambodia. Things got fraught when I refused to hand over my passport or the cash saying I’d arrange my own visa, and they got worse when other passengers followed suit. Our disgruntled cop, with gun on waist, got particularly irate and threatened to force us all back to Bangkok. Happily, they eventually backed down under a barrage of abuse from the over-excited female American contingent and we headed off.
When the border crossing was in eyeshot we stopped and one of the driver’s mates jumped out and sprinted up the road. Thinking nothing of it, we pulled our bags out of the bus and headed towards the visa point. We marched through the Thai exit point, and across the no-mans land which, interestingly given the absolute destitution on the Cambodian side, is crammed with five star Vegas-style hotels, and up to the Cambodian entry point. While the paid passengers were whisked through, we were met by an official who demanded we pay €50 blips in Baht for entry. While two of the American girls from our bus argued heroically I got talking to a group of Aussies who had taxied to Poipet and had just paid $20 dollars. It was then that I spotted the guy who had sprinted from our bus standing a few paces behind the Cambodian immigration guy. It was an intricate operation – even some officials were in on it. We paid anyway, given that our other option seemed to be a bus back to Bangkok, and set off down the dirt road to Siem Riep – the town that serves as a jump-off point for the famed Angkor Wat. Sadly, although thousands of tourists ply the route daily, the Cambodian government hasn’t put any tarmac on it yet – apparently because a Thai airline which operates flights to Siem Riep pays to keep the road in bits and flights full.
The last leg of our journey should take three hours, but our driver saw to it that it took eight. The reason behind this part of the scam was because he and his mafia buddies ran a backstreet guesthouse on the outskirts of Siem Riep – get the tourists arriving in the middle of the night and they’ll be so knackered they’ll agree to stay in your gangster-run rat hole. And so it proved – it was the only hotel I was ever in that was run entirely by a gang of lads aged between 16 and 25 but we were all too tired to care and stayed there anyway. The boys, I found, had an interesting take on running a hotel.
The standard spiel at the check-in desk started, “Check out time 12 o’clock.”
It ended with, “you want marijuana? I send lady to your room?”
I was comforted somewhat when one of the American girls who shouted, “What the hell?” and pointed to a sign over the door of the entrance. An illustration indicated that visitors were not permitted to bring guns, hand grenades or hard drugs into the establishment.
“I’ll sleep better knowing that,” I said, and headed off to bed.
technomist
Thanks for that description.