Not much fun, but the job got done. We're legal. We never made it to a casino. It was four hours from Bangkok to Aranyaprathet on the Cambodian border and four hours back. The three and a half hours in between consisted of sitting in tourist-trap rest stops ("purgatories," Joe called them) and standing in immigration queues in the pounding heat. Lunch was a bag of rancid peanuts at a 7-Eleven.
Among the other travelers in the 12-passenger Toyota van we rode on ($30 RT) were:
---young Swedish and German backpackers with that overland-from-Cologne-to-Saigon determined look
---a thirtyish American named Chuck who used to scout movie locations in California and now runs two internet cafes in Bangkok. Asked about the U.S. presidential election, Chuck wasn't sure who was running. Joe told him. Iraq? "I can't express an opinion on that, because I don't have all the facts."
---a fifty-three-ish German jewelery dealer living part-time in Bangkok who has a wife in Wurzburg and two Thai girlfriends, "one 23 and one older." He "saved the life" of the older one by buying her a house. The man's wife has taken a younger boyfriend, and he's not happy about that. His name---we saw his business card and could barely contain ourselves---was Herr Schmuck.
Among the several unanticipated costs of this unavoidable excursion were an extra $12 each for expedited "VIP" handling of our documents at the Cambodian checkpost---i.e., backhanders to the Cambodian officials, with a cut for the Thais arranging them. We never got more than a few feet inside Cambodia.
Then, back in Bangkok at 6:30, the driver of the van that had picked us up at our hotel in the morning dumped us and six or seven others along an expressway and cheerfully told us to hail a cab. He had put together a private deal to drive four Koreans to their distant hotel and we were in the way. We'll complain to the travel agent who sold us our tickets. Mai pen rai? Yes and no.
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