Monday 16th May - Train to Siem Reap

We got the 5.50 train from Bangkok to Siem reap. There is only one class, 3rd but there are some 2nd class seats available if you get there early enough to nab one and they are the same price. It cost only 45 baht or so for the ticket, which is about 1.30. The journey is an arduous six hours but it takes you through some lovely Thai countryside. The train was delayed, taking an hour longer than it should have. This meant that we only arrived in Aranypharat at 12.30.
We headed into the town itself to find a bank. All the banks were closed so we got out some Thai baht and headed to the border.
There were a lot of scams which happened in the next few hours between here and Siem Reap. I counted 7 in total, but I could have missed a few.
We have been through this border before and we knew what to expect, but the scams are infuriating if you just want to get through it quickly.
We got a tuk took from the town to the border. The driver stopped by an office in the middle of nowhere which claimed to be an official visa place. This is scam one and its a good one even though its an old one. They put the hard sell on us, telling us that we needed to pay them 45 dollars for a visa (which costs 20), they told us a pack of lies (border is closed, we can't get visa on arrival, etc). We said no to them several times and finally they relented. The tuk tuk driver apologised for bringing us to the scam guy, which was nice. Luckily we avoided the money changer scams, which I will come to later, and found a bank near the border where we changed our thai baht to US dollars.