Wednesday, November 30, 2011

almostfearless.com

almostfearless.com

The Hilarious and Strange Thai-Cambodian Border

Posted: 29 Nov 2011 08:31 PM PST

We had planned our great “Backpacking Through SE Asia with a Toddler” experiment for a month ago, but the reports from Bangkok and Siem Reap were conflicting. Were these two cities submerged in water? Partly submerged? Or was it just in the outskirts? Would the roads be open or muddy messes or worse, closed altogether? It was frustrating to me how difficult it was to get accurate information.

I’m not the only one… countless travelers emailed me about Chiang Mai saying, “So how bad is the flooding?”  The answer: there never was any flooding in the city.  It’s mostly in the rural areas, and Chiang Mai province is quite large.  It’s like when I lived in Texas and my friends from the Northeast would email and say, “I heard about the wild fires, are you guys okay?”  Yes — I’d have to drive four hours on the highway just to reach the smoke, so unless ALL OF TEXAS goes up in flames, I’m probably just fine.  You see, scale, scope, and basic geography seems to get lost in news coverage.  There isn’t just flooding, it’s “Thailand is flooding,” like the Gulf of Thailand raised by three feet and just covered the entire country. Never happened.

That’s not to say the flooding wasn’t bad.  It was, it just wasn’t equally bad everywhere.  We couldn’t postpone our trip any longer, anyway, our Thai visas were expiring.

We only had one night in Bangkok but my god, the food.  The street food is so fresh and cooked so perfectly.  We got chicken and pork skewers from a random guy near our hotel and sat in silence as we scarfed them down.  Marinated meat, cooked over smokey coals, perfectly tender and tasty.  We thought the food in Chiang Mai was good, but Bangkok is like a city of gourmet chefs lining the streets with their single dish stalls and preparing unassuming food with a skill you might only appreciate after being here for a while.  Or worse, you might get used to it and forever think $1 is the correct price for the best meal of your life.  Later we went out with a friend who wasn’t used to our “small white child celebrity status” where everyone says hello — everyone — as you walk down the street.  ”Hello Baby!” they yell to you, and I would prop up Cole’s hand by the elbow and help him wave.

This was the easy part.

The next morning we left at 5 AM for Cambodia, and our overland backpacking adventure began.  At the northern bus station you can catch one of the hourly buses to Aranyaprathet, the Thai border town across from Cambodia’s entry point.  I was afraid Cole would wake up and want to get off my lap, begining a battle of the wills that looks something like this:

Cole squirms to get down.

“Sorry, you have to stay with mommy.”

“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”— until I let him down —-”AHHHHHHHHH”— even after I let him down because he’s annoyed it took me so long—”AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”—and a bit more for good measure.

Or he passes out from lack of oxgyen (or one of the other passengers strangles us both, not a small feat considering there are two necks to wring, but entirely possible under such duress).

We came prepared.  I know that some people think it’s a bad idea to let a child under two watch TV, but not a single person on that bus said a word about my questionable parenting when I stymied his wiggles with a kids movie on my laptop.  Drew even has movies on his iPhone, just in case, because honestly this stuff is like baby crack.  His eyes glaze over, he’s in rapt attention, and a five hour bus ride that turns into seven — flies by in a blur of cookie bribes, Megamind and Finding Nemo, and unlimited breastfeeding (under the sarong, giving us a little tent of privacy in our seat).

When we arrived at the border, I felt like a super mom.  Cole was sleepy from the sugar crash and hours video consumption (sometimes I don’t think he even blinks, he’s that into it).  So, I’m not getting any awards for my methods, but we made it.  The Cambodian Border.

Or at least that’s what the hand-painted sign said.  It was a make-shift building, one of those temporary constructions you might see on a building site, and three men rushed up to us in our tuk-tuk.

“Hello, Welcome to Cambodia!”

What.

My friend Jason later observed, “You know something is up when they welcome you to the border and several people are trying to help you.”

In my experience, border workers don’t smile.  They don’t meet you at your vehicle and walk you into the building.  And they don’t usually have a border inside another country.  Didn’t we have to leave Thailand before entering Cambodia?  You know, the whole “stamp my passport thing”?

I didn’t move.  ”Take us to the border.”

“This is the border,” the tuk-tuk driver said.

I waited.  The men were encouraging me to get out. “Yes, this is the border, come with us,” they said with some urgency.

I ignored them and leaned towards the driver, making eye contact in his rear view mirror.  ”No, take us to the border.”

Then I sat back in my seat and waited.  Our friends Jason and Ann arrived behind us, in their tuk-tuk and perhaps sensing I wasn’t going to budge, the driver revved his engine, did a U-Turn and started driving away.  I yell to our friends, “This isn’t it… follow us!”

The hilarious part of this is that when he finally drove us a block down the street to the real border, I got out, non-plussed, gathered our stuff and paid the driver for the ride.  As if it’s completely okay that he took us to the wrong place, on purpose, in order to extort money from us (I would later learn tourists fall for this scam with a price tag of $30 or more for a fake “border fees”).

We said “Thanks!” and went to passport control.  It wasn’t until later, that I thought, “Wow, that was kind of messed up.”

It’s like some kind of compartmentalization that you achieve, especially in Southeast Asia, where you learn to not take these kinds of things personally, and maybe you think, “well that’s a scam for tourists who don’t know better, not for me”.  You still have to do business with the people who initially try to rip you off.  So you get used to it.  It’s like their opening bid.  Can I rip you off?  No?  Okay, what else can I do for you?

The crazy part is that everyone is in on it. I mean they built a building! They made a fake “Cambodia Border” sign. They have a gate! And a guard at that gate! Guarding the fake Cambodian border!  They bribed all the drivers in town to take tourists to them. Apparently, this has been going on for years. Years! Even if they are getting real visas for people at a hefty surcharge, they are presenting themselves AS THE CAMBODIAN BORDER.

It’s kind of breathtaking.

We crossed into Cambodia and began our trip to Siem Reap. To be continued…

Pic: Steven De Pollo

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