There are only 2 ways to get to Angkor Wat from Bangkok- fly or take a bus. We had been told that the roads in Cambodia are bad, but the plane tickets were $400 each and we simply could not afford to add that expense to our trip. Besides, how bad could the roads be? For only $5 each, we were able to book the bus that would take us right from Khao San Road in Bangkok to the town of Siem Reap, which is only 5km from the temples.

We go up at 6am on the Saturday, Oct 12 and walked out to meet our bus. The ride from Bangkok to the border of Cambodia lasted 4 hours and was uneventful. The bus stopped at a coffee shop near the border and asked all those that did not have visas to process their papers. It wasn't until later that we understood why we had stopped at this place and not gone directly to the border. The tour bus was taking a cut of the cost of the visa, which they could only do if they processed the visas on our behalf. Luckily for us we already had their visas. An hour later we proceeded to the border and passed through without incident. The minute we crossed the border you could see a huge difference between the countries. Their were beggars on the streets everywhere, the city was bleak and the roads were unfinished.

We waited on the Cambodia side for an hour for our bus to arrive. When we had booked our ticket in Bangkok we were shown pictures of the air conditioned mini bus that was supposed to be waiting in Cambodia to take us, in 3-4 hours to Siem Reap. Instead, what showed up were 2 beat up old pickup trucks that looked like they had barely survived the civil war. Our guides told us that the roads were very bad because of recent rain and that a mini bus would be unable to pass. Even if it could, they explained, the bus was broken. We all stared at these trucks for what seemed like forever, trying to figure out how 40 people and all our backpacks were going to fit on 2 pickup trucks. The guides did not seem to worry and began to throw our bags on the truck, using ropes to keep the bags from falling off. We crammed ourselves onto the trucks and tried to carve ourselves a spot. Jen sat in the middle with her knees bent up somewhere around her shoulders. Dan was at the back of the truck with his legs and half his body hanging off the back. His left hand held a backpack strap to prevent him from being catapulted off the truck.

The trucks left the border around 3pm and within minutes, it was clear that the trip was going to be extremely painful. The roads were bad, horribly bad and the dust that was kicked up by the passing cars was almost unbreathable. There was no pavement anywhere-only hardened sand and stone. The potholes were numerous, deep and unavoidable. We asked the guide how long this journey was supposed to take and he smiled and told us 5 hours. The only thing that actually kept us going were the sarcastic jokes by two Brits (Chris and Rich). After an hour of travelling, the trucks came to a stop at a small restaurant. We all streched our legs and headed straight for the beers. We asked the guides again how much longer and they smiled and said 5 hours. While in the restaurant, we noticed that our bags were being removed from the trucks. Apparently, one of the drivers wanted to go home to see his family, so we were changing trucks. We rearranged our bags and ourselves back on the trucks and started up again, but not before a women pickpocket tried to steal a few things from the other truck of passengers.

We drove for another hour and asked again how much longer and again the smile and again the same answer - 5 hours. We were beginning to lose patience with our guides, especially after we saw an air conditioned mini bus drive by us on the road. This confirmed our suspicion that our mini bus did not exist (except of course for the picture in the brochure). By about 5:30pm it was starting to get dark outside and we hit our first major road blockage. In front of our truck was a massive puddle of water, actually more like a small pond. One of our guides walked into the middle of it and showed the driver that the water only went up to his knees. The driver gunned it and went through the puddle, with all of us on the back holding on. We asked if there were more of these and our guide smiled and said "yes, many more". We didn't even bother to ask how much longer was the journey.

We reached another major puddle but this one was much deaper (about 2.5 feet). Our driver gunned it but got stuck in the middle. We were all asked to get off the truck and the men were asked to push from behind, while the driver tried to drive. We eventually got out of the water, with most of they guys soaked in mud from the knees downward. No more than 20 minutes later we hit another one of these puddles and again got stuck in the middle. After unsuccessfully trying to push from the back, the second truck, which had managed to get through, tied a rope onto it's bumper and pulled us out.

By this time it was about 10pm and we were tired, in pain and wet. We drove for another hour and then we saw a huge line-up of tractor trailers along the side of the road. Our truck stopped and told us that it could not pass. We were told to take all of our stuff off the truck and walk through the water to another truck that would be on the other side. We did as we were asked and reach another pickup. This was our third pickup of the trip and it turned out to be smaller than our previous ones. To make things worse, the battery did not work. Another pickup managed to get our battery started and once again we crammed into the back. We drove for another half hour and finally hit pavement. We practically jumped for joy, even through the pavement was only marginally better than the dirt road. After another hour, we hit Siem Reap. Our journey was supposed to take 12 hour from Bangkok but instead had taken 20. At 1:30am, the bus stopped in front of a guest house, and as they had anticipated, we were all desperate and decided to stay at their guest house. No one wanted to start looking for a guest house in a stange town at 1:30am. We fell asleep almost as soon as we hit the bed and slept soundly until 11am the next day.