Road to Pattaya

By Andrew - December 31, 2023

Originally we planned to take a bus from Siem Reap to Bangkok where we would board the World Odyssey ship, however, the ship was in need of some kind of service or repair (foreshadowing?) which could only be done in Pattaya Thailand. We weighed our options: either travel to Bangkok anyway, stay in our modest hotel room and use public transit around the city, then take a second bus ride to Pattaya a couple of day later, or forfeit our non-refundable bus tickets, book new travel directly to Pattaya and stay in a hotel near the beach. We chose the latter.

I can tell you that there were moments we thought we might regret this decision, but ultimately we are glad we chose this alternative.

First the challenges:

We learned that bus travel was a bit more comfortable than travel by van, but there were no busses available from Siem Reap to Pattaya so our 8 hour trip from Cambodia to Thailand would be via van. What we weren't expecting was how much more discomfort awaited us this time!

We arrived early to the bus station this time but quickly ran into an issue: they wanted a copy of our Cambodian visa for the border. The only problem was that the printed copies of those visas had never been returned to us when we crossed the border from Vietnam! The bus company suggested we go to a nearby print shop in order to print more copies of the visas, but realized that because it was a holiday most places were closed. They quickly arranged a tuk-tuk to take Ender across town to a print shop that was open then rush back to the van to leave on time.

The first portion of the trip was relatively uneventful. We weren't the only English speakers in the van so most instructions were given in Khmer and English including taking our lunch order (chicken or beef?). When we arrived at the border we all exited the van, they pulled our luggage and placed it on a sidewalk in front of a small office of the bus company several hundred meters from the border. We were told to leave our luggage there, "don't worry, just leave it here," and that we would have lunch afterwards, and were told to walk to the border to go through immigration. They placed lanyards around our necks so that various people from the bus company could spot us in groups and direct us along the way. First we passed through immigration on the Cambodian side, then walked down the street, crossed the border on foot via a bridge called "the friendship bridge."

After passing through customs on the Thai side, we found our luggage waiting for us. We were taken to another office owned by a different bus company where they collected our lanyards, then waited for a different bus to pick us up.

Oddly, we never had lunch; our lunch presumably remained with the original driver and passengers because no chicken nor beef lunch was presented to us. Instead, we were loaded into a different van with different passengers.

The van was...uncomfortable.

See how Ender is seated much higher than the rest of us? That's because he wasn't in a real seat, but instead on a "cushion" (imagine an upholstered phone book) with no back. Luckily, about 3 hours into the trip some passengers got off the van and he was able to shift into a real seat.

At long last we arrived in Pattaya. We had a really difficult time getting a "Grab" (a taxi service that runs on an app similar to Lyft or Uber). Having no Thai baht yet, we didn't have many options for transportation or dinner. Luckily there was a Burger King next door, so we rolled our luggage to the Burger King where we could pay with a credit card, summoned a taxi, and waited until a driver accepted our fare.

Not to be "those Americans" but having some Burger King after almost two weeks of Asian food was kind of a treat!

Eventually a taxi came and took us through the not-insignificant New Years Eve traffic to our hotel and we were able to relax and refresh after our most grueling travel day yet.

Kim and Jacob were absolutely done for the day. Ender, on the other hand, wasn't about to go to bed early on a New Year's Eve in a foreign country, and a party town no less! So after game of Farkle (thanks Grandma),