Neon lights and tourists ... welcome to Siem Reap

We slept better last night and begin our journey to the border.  We take a boat to the mainland and then wait over an hour before we get on a bus to the border.  At the bus station there are touts trying to get tourists to hand over their passports and pay them to do all the admin at the border.  They are asking USD 40 for the service, which doesn't include the illegal exit fee from Laos or the illegal medical to enter Cambodia ... we decline.

On arrival, we queue to exit Laos ... they ask for the exit fee  (USD 2 per person), we question it, have a bit of a discussion then agree to pay them our last remaining Laos Kip instead.  Its about 3 USD worth for the two of us but we don't mind so much as we will have no use for it.  Stage one completed ... we now walk across the bridge and manage to ignore the fake nurses asking us to have a medical ... most people stop though and they say we won't get our visa if we don't ... we decide to chance it.  Off to the visa on arrival office.  We fill in our forms, hand over our photos and pay our fee which is USD 35.  Its a bit of scam as it should be 30 but they are charging everyone the same, regardless of where they are from, so we don't feel we have an argument here.  Then to the immigration hut and we have our visas ... no one asks for our medical certificate!  It wasn't actually so bad and we ended up paying just over 36 USD each, whereas if we'd gone through an agent and had our medical it would have been 43 so we're happy. 

Although we had some nice times in Laos, overall it was a little underwhelming.  Andy in particular isn't sorry to say goodbye.

After a bit of a wait we get into our cramped mini bus to Stung Treng.  We have a stop there for an hour where we get money and have lunch then back into another not quite as cramped mini van to Siem Reap.  We leave at 2pm and arrive at 6.30pm.  The driver is slightly nutty and drives like a maniac but apart from that the trip wasn't too bad.  Before the new road was open it took 12-18 hours apparently!  The company also gives us a free tuk tuk to our guest house.

We take a wander up the infamous Pub Street which is just packed full of tourists, restaurants and bars.  We eat here tonight and have a drink in one of the bars but vow to explore the city a bit more tomorrow.  Not the best pic for today but we didn't take many and at least its not another one of the Mekong!

Hello Cambodia.