Cambodia Week 4 16th May 2011
 
A few km from the Thai border town at Arunyaprathep we began to see signs to the border.

We stocked up at the Makra Cash and Carry, then some more at Tesco Lotus. Tesco have a few more things with labels in English though Makra make an attempt to translate.

In general we expect Cambodia (Khampuchea) to be a bit harder to find supplies.

 
There's a queue of trucks waiting on the Thai side of the border.

Its only when we looked at the photo we saw "the welcome sign for Zhulian".

We followed a car and drove past the trucks.

Usual border chaos. We were shunted between customs offices a bit to get the Carnet stamped and signed out of Thailand. An anxious moment when we realised that on entry customs hadn't given us an important bit of paper. Customs decided to ignore and stamped the Carnet.

We were hussled into paying a service to obtain our Cambodia visas on arrival but the price was reasonable and we needed to retain our sanity.

 
The Cambodian side. Taxis lined up waiting to take backpackers and anyone else to wherever they wanted to go.

Cambodian customs was closed until 2pm. We parked in their car park, behind security. We went for a walk, had some food, bought a prepaid mobile internet sim card.

When we returned it took Assistant Chief about 2 minutes to stamp the Carnet. Someone who knew what he was doing.
 
We stopped beside the main road about 30km from the border.

We wished we'd taken a photograph of young Cambodian and his sister on motor bike traveling the opposite way to us. He stopped to ask about Tardis.

He advised us to stay where there were more people. We turned off the main road and asked.

Ali is being shown where we can park and sleep. The "driveway" to someone's house.

We have all sorts of mixed feelings about the kindness being shown and our complete inability to repay it (or simply our lack of imagination).

 
We attracted a bit of attention in a very small village.

Unfortunately it seemed the map of the world got little reaction apart from "Kampuchea" and smiles.

We had a bit more success with a map of Kampuchea and where we were headed.

We were also appropriately embarrassed at our lack of the local language while the villagers were willing to try out their English. As luck would have it our friend from earlier had taught us a couple of basic phrases like su sudai - hello, arkun - thanks and jum riep leiir - goodbye.

Not everyone is friendly of course, why would they be. But 51% is good.

 
Angkor Wat, Cambodia Week 4 17th May 2011