After Kachinaburi I went back to Bangkok to collect my visa, and most important my passport from the Indian embassy.
Happy to finally have my visa I decided I was done with Thailand for now. Next place Cambodia. I went to buy a ticket to Siem Riep. At the ticket office they were very careful to inform about how important it was not to let anyone else do our application for visa at the border to Cambodia and that there will be people there try to scam us. We should not pay more than 20$ for the visa.
The next day we picked up by the mini bus to go to Cambodia. The company we where going with was called JT Travel and the man in charge of the company seemed very nice as they always do....
Everything went well until we approached the border. Then he took us to a restaurant for a lunch break. No one was really interested in lunch we just wanted to get to Siem Riep. At the restaurant he wanted us to fill in some papers for the visa before we went to the border and he replaced our bus tickets with stickers on our shirts.
Then he told us that if we just paid him like 1700 bath or 25$ and 300 bath he would fix our visas in 10 minutes.
We said that we where told not to let anyone else handle our visa application and that we wanted to do ours at the border.
He said that it was better if he did this for us, it would only take 10 minutes. We still said that we wanted to do it by ourselves. He got more and more frustrated and started to say things like that it was his company that we where traveling with and that he was the one who decided, in the end he was screaming at us.
Finally he said ok I'll take you to the office for visa application. When we tried to take our visa application paper (that he had handed to us) with us he stopped us and tore them apart. He also took our stickers that was the only proof we had of paying the bus.
When we arrived to the "visa application office" they told us about the formalities which was almost the same information that our angry driver had given to us. They could easily have fold us to believe that we where at the real visa application center but then they made a mistake by saying that it would only take them 10 minutes to arrange with our visa at the Cambodian embassy.
No, we said. We are going to the border to arrange with our visa from there. They started to yell again:
- and how are you going to get from the border to Siem Riep?? You don't have any stickers....!!!
- there is not possible to apply for a visa at the border!!!
- if you apply for a visa on your own it will take three days to get it!!
- you will come back here and beg me for a visa and then it will be me laughing!!!
He was furious with us, but we just walked a way.
In that moment I wished that I had applied for the visa trough internet so it was done and nothing to fought about(which I thought about a number of times but decided that it was to complicated because I had to upload a picture, stupid lazy me!!)
When we got to the border we got our stamp out from Thailand and on the other side of the road we found the office for visa application. I payed my 20$ and than another 100 bath on the side and 10 minutes later we had our visa. We went straight to the emigration office to get our stamp in to Cambodia.
In queue to the emigrations the rest of our travel mates from the bus joined up behind us, this could not been a better time we thought. We talked about what we would do since they took away (the sticker) our only proof that we had payed for the bus trip to Siem Riep. We decided that we should just try to get on the bus and if he wanted to trow us out he could try...We would not make this easy for him...
So when we got to the terminal from where the bus was leaving one of the men from the office where there to make sure everyone got to the right place. We approached him and in the beginning he ignored us before he got mad again and started to yell at us. He didn't know who we where and he didn't know anything abut our bus tickets... We felt like we where getting no where with him and that it was better to just buy new bus tickets Siem Riep. Before we went off to the bus I just wanted to make his life a hell for a moment so I started to take some pictures of him with my camera and soon Christian was doing the same. This time he got completely crazy with me screaming that I was a very bad tourist: - YOU, very bad tourist!!! And I replied: - Yes I'm a very bad tourist but you are a very bad person. You don't have any moral, you're a scammers and I will show your picture to everyone so they will know.
Then we left to get to the bus. It felt a but funny when the rest of the group from our "scam bus" joined us on the bus but didn't have to pay since they had their stickers...we payed twice for the same bus.
In the end, I guess we payed the same price as the others who let the company handled their visa. Though it felt good to know that the extra money I payed went to the Cambodian government instead of a Thai scam company.
Happy to finally have my visa I decided I was done with Thailand for now. Next place Cambodia. I went to buy a ticket to Siem Riep. At the ticket office they were very careful to inform about how important it was not to let anyone else do our application for visa at the border to Cambodia and that there will be people there try to scam us. We should not pay more than 20$ for the visa.
The next day we picked up by the mini bus to go to Cambodia. The company we where going with was called JT Travel and the man in charge of the company seemed very nice as they always do....
Everything went well until we approached the border. Then he took us to a restaurant for a lunch break. No one was really interested in lunch we just wanted to get to Siem Riep. At the restaurant he wanted us to fill in some papers for the visa before we went to the border and he replaced our bus tickets with stickers on our shirts.
Then he told us that if we just paid him like 1700 bath or 25$ and 300 bath he would fix our visas in 10 minutes.
We said that we where told not to let anyone else handle our visa application and that we wanted to do ours at the border.
He said that it was better if he did this for us, it would only take 10 minutes. We still said that we wanted to do it by ourselves. He got more and more frustrated and started to say things like that it was his company that we where traveling with and that he was the one who decided, in the end he was screaming at us.
Finally he said ok I'll take you to the office for visa application. When we tried to take our visa application paper (that he had handed to us) with us he stopped us and tore them apart. He also took our stickers that was the only proof we had of paying the bus.
When we arrived to the "visa application office" they told us about the formalities which was almost the same information that our angry driver had given to us. They could easily have fold us to believe that we where at the real visa application center but then they made a mistake by saying that it would only take them 10 minutes to arrange with our visa at the Cambodian embassy.
No, we said. We are going to the border to arrange with our visa from there. They started to yell again:
- and how are you going to get from the border to Siem Riep?? You don't have any stickers....!!!
- there is not possible to apply for a visa at the border!!!
- if you apply for a visa on your own it will take three days to get it!!
- you will come back here and beg me for a visa and then it will be me laughing!!!
He was furious with us, but we just walked a way.
In that moment I wished that I had applied for the visa trough internet so it was done and nothing to fought about(which I thought about a number of times but decided that it was to complicated because I had to upload a picture, stupid lazy me!!)
When we got to the border we got our stamp out from Thailand and on the other side of the road we found the office for visa application. I payed my 20$ and than another 100 bath on the side and 10 minutes later we had our visa. We went straight to the emigration office to get our stamp in to Cambodia.
In queue to the emigrations the rest of our travel mates from the bus joined up behind us, this could not been a better time we thought. We talked about what we would do since they took away (the sticker) our only proof that we had payed for the bus trip to Siem Riep. We decided that we should just try to get on the bus and if he wanted to trow us out he could try...We would not make this easy for him...
So when we got to the terminal from where the bus was leaving one of the men from the office where there to make sure everyone got to the right place. We approached him and in the beginning he ignored us before he got mad again and started to yell at us. He didn't know who we where and he didn't know anything abut our bus tickets... We felt like we where getting no where with him and that it was better to just buy new bus tickets Siem Riep. Before we went off to the bus I just wanted to make his life a hell for a moment so I started to take some pictures of him with my camera and soon Christian was doing the same. This time he got completely crazy with me screaming that I was a very bad tourist: - YOU, very bad tourist!!! And I replied: - Yes I'm a very bad tourist but you are a very bad person. You don't have any moral, you're a scammers and I will show your picture to everyone so they will know.
Then we left to get to the bus. It felt a but funny when the rest of the group from our "scam bus" joined us on the bus but didn't have to pay since they had their stickers...we payed twice for the same bus.
In the end, I guess we payed the same price as the others who let the company handled their visa. Though it felt good to know that the extra money I payed went to the Cambodian government instead of a Thai scam company.
Inga kommentarer:
Skicka en kommentar