Day 31 of The Big Adventure, according to Sarah. 

03.00AM alarm went off after what seemed like only half an hour of sleep. We both dragged ourselves from our matchbox. Lauren realised she had to print her Cambodian visa and so dashed downstairs. 

I got dressed and carried my bag downstairs. We’d booked a taxi to the airport through a new app I’d downloaded that was essentially Asia’s Uber. We were highly apprehensive about the whole thing so had booked it half an hour early incase it didn’t show up. 

After we’d checked out downstairs I looked out through the door to see a man manically waving at us. It wasn’t our taxi driver but a friendly passerby who directed us 50m down the road to our taxi. The taxi ride to the airport was tense – we were both nervous about having overstayed our visas. We’d done some research online and found that we could be imprisoned (but that was usually reserved for people who had overstayed their visa by years) or we could have to pay a fine of 500baht per overstayed day. Either way, we were essentially at the mercy of border control. We arrived at the airport by 4am and our flight wasn’t until 6.30am, perhaps we’d overdone it a bit this time. And then we saw the queue leading up to the check-in desk… The queue snaked so far and around many poles and other desks that it took us quite some time just to figure out where the end of the line was. We finally found it and overheard the boy in front of us saying he was going to Cambodia to a member of staff. I seized this opportunity and introduced us, told him we were also heading to Cambodia and that we would be following him because he looked like he knew where he was going. Early morning delirium at its best. 

Thankfully, he laughed and said he didn’t really know where he was going either and told us his name was Taylor. He was from Southern California and had been teaching English in Phuket for the last year. We essentially spent the entire queue exchanging life stories and we told him we were both very nervous because we’d overstayed our visas – we were official ‘overstayed aliens’ according to the Thai Government website. He said he was in the same boat as his teaching visa had expired yesterday, which was slightly reassuring. 

We finally managed to check in and dropped our bags. Next up: border control. We muttered a few reassuring words to each other; ‘we’ll be fine’s mostly. We joined the queue and because Lauren was definitely the more nervous of the two of us, I asked if she wanted me to go first. She said she would go first and walked up to the counter. 

She handed over her passport and I saw the man put his ‘I need assistance’ light on, just like they do in Tesco’s when one of your items doesn’t have a barcode. 

My heart beat quickened. 

I saw a man in a (shockingly tight) uniform and a smart hat come over and escort her away from the counter. Where was he taking her?!

As soon as she left, I rushed up to the counter, gave him my passport and said ‘I need to go with them’. 

He looked at my passport and verified that I did, indeed, need to go with the man too so I rushed after them. By the time I’d caught up with them, Lauren was thanking him profusely and he was stamping her passport. 

I handed him my passport and he stamped mine too and we went on our way. Apparently he had said to Lauren ‘don’t worry – you don’t need to pay but never do it again’. 
Thank god. We were safely (technically) out of Thailand. With no imprisonment and no fines. 

Taylor had been waiting for us on the other side and suggested we get some currency out as US dollars are essentially the main currency used in Cambodia. Following his advice, we both withdrew some USD and continued to the departure lounge where we had a McDonalds breakfast (there weren’t any other options) and Krispy Kremes (because who doesn’t love Krispy Kremes?!). 

We continued to our gate and found Taylor’s friend who he’d been teaching English with. 

We all boarded the plane and sat in our respective seats. The flight was only 1hour long and seemed to be over in no time. 

Next hurdle: Cambodian border. 

We’d got Cambodian e-visas but they only started a week later because we’d been expecting to spend another week in Thailand. And mine hadn’t even arrived. So we had a grand total of 1 visa that was valid in a weeks time. Not a good start.

I decided I would probably just have to get a visa on arrival (like most other people were) and Lauren was just going to hope they’d let her in early. 

I went up the visa desk and they said I needed a passport photo for the visa. I looked around the large room and there wasn’t a passport photo machine in sight. I looked back and he said ‘100baht if you don’t have a photo’. 

I’d heard things usually went along this route in Cambodia: you could basically pay your way out of anything. So I handed over my money and waited for them to stick the visa in my passport. 

We continued to the border and handed over our passports, Laurens e-visa worked a treat (even though she was a week early) and we were both officially into Cambodia. Thank god. We had been so nervous about that journey – it was such a relief that it had all worked out. 

 

We found Taylor and his friend and they suggested sharing a taxi because their hostel was only a 10 minute drive from ours. We sleepily agreed and somehow we ended up agreeing to get a tuktuk. Between the four of us. Each with very large backpacks. Cramped is an understatement. 

We were all so sleepy by this point we just watched the streets of Phonm Penh go past and willed the journey to be over. 

Thankfully, our hostel was first so we hopped out and said our goodbyes. 

We went into our hostel to check in and the receptionist told us ‘check in is at 2pm’. 

It was 9.30am by this point and we were already shattered. Thankfully, she let us go to our room early. 

We walked up the uneven steps to the third floor where our room was. We dumped our bags, switched on the aircon and got straight into bed. 

We had an enjoyable 3 hour nap and woke up feeling rather groggy and not really refreshed at all. But we knew if we slept any longer we’d never sleep that night.
We decided that we should head down to the south coast as soon as possible and see Phonm Penh when we come back to go to Ho Chi Minh. With this in mind, we went to reception to try to book a bus to Sihnoukville. The receptionist said we could get a VIP bus the next morning for $11 each. With lack of an alternative, we agreed. The bus would pick us up at 9.45am and take us to Sihnoukville. 
We heard our tummies grumble and decided we should head out for some food. We googled what was around us and found ‘city mall’ was just over the road. 

We went out onto the street and had the distressing realisation: how are we supposed to cross the road?

We’d heard that Vietnam was crazy when it came to crossing the road but this seemed pretty tough. 

In the end we just had to run and hope the mopeds went round us. 

We made it over alive and headed into the city mall. 

Again, a very strange place. Looked slightly haunted, many of the shops weren’t open or were selling very random things. 

We followed the signs to the food court and found many different food stalls all serving the same Khmer dishes. 

We found one place that would do us veggie fried rice with a fried egg ontop so that’s what I got and Lauren went for veggie fried rice with sausage – Maverick.

  
The sausage strangely tasted like street food smelt – disgusting. 

She picked it out and I gave her some of my veg (fried morning glory, what else?!) 

  
We decided we should buy a Cambodia SIM card so we could find our way around.

Lauren had found one that was a 20min walk away. So we headed in that direction to find that the majority of roads don’t have pavements and where there is pavement it is used as a car park. 

The tarmack on the road was in very poor condition, and there was a lot of rubbish strewn about the place. This all made a 20 minute walk take much, much longer. We finally found a place that looked like it would sell SIM cards and headed in. Trying to negotiate SIMs and top up packages and amounts turned out to be quite tricky, but we got there in the end and left triumphant with a new Cambodian SIM. 

We decided to walk back to the hostel as we were both shattered by this time. We stopped off to try and find a supermarket or a 7-eleven but could find neither. We ended up buying some snacks for tomorrow’s long journey from a petrol station. 
Snacks in hand, we headed home and straight to bed. What a day.