Siem Reap to Koh Samui, Thailand

First some random Cambodia thoughts:
Some days in Sihanoukville it looked like all the mattresses in the city were being moved around on the back of motorbikes. Not true of course but we saw a lot of motorbikes with a stack of double mattresses on each of them.
Driving a car in southeast Asia means using your horn a lot to warn others that you're coming. In Canada, this would seem very rude. It's very common here for cars going both ways to move over and drive on the paved shoulder to let someone pass in either direction down the middle. It's a little unnerving sometimes to be shooting the gap at high speed but so far we're untouched.
Cambodia has a largely rural population. It's somewhere over 80% farmers and 90% of the crop is rice.
There are lots of free range cows on the streets. At night especially, you have to watch where you step.
It's easy to get a photo of a family of 4 on a motorbike. We've seen families of 5 but were never quick enough to get a picture.
People with charming smiles clasp their hands together in prayer pose to greet you or thank you.
There always seems to be lots of joking and laughing. The other night a group of tuk tuk drivers were playing their version of hacky sack while waiting for fares. There's so many times that they say "tuk tuk?" that T shirts are made saying "No Tuk Tuk" or "No Tuk Tuk Today or Tomorrow". When one of the group asked me about "tuk tuk?", I pointed at my plain T shirt and said (with a smile) as if it was written on my shirt, "No tuk tuk". They all started laughing and joking with us. It pays to engage people in conversation, not be threatened by them. Cambodia seems very safe and most people are very easy to get along with.
There are lots of dogs.
They build very tall hay stacks.
Angkor beer is good stuff with the slogan "My Country, My Beer".
Cambodian food is delicious.
Sales ladies don't give up but will joke with you even if you don't buy. "Where are you from?" is the standard question. When you answer "Canada", some of them can say "Canada, 33 million people, capital Ottawa, the people speak both French and English".
Any culture that can build Angkor has a bright future, even though they've had to start all over after the horrors of the Khmer Rouge. It's incomprehensible how Khmers were persuaded to turn on each other until 1/4 of the population of 8 million was dead. It's especially difficult to understand given that they're so easy-going, polite, smiling and often devout Buddhists. Anyway, they hit bottom and are climbing their way out with a smile.
Finally, yesterday's events:
Our taxi picked us up at our hotel in Siem Reap at 6 am. The restaurant didn't open until 6 but a few minutes earlier the staff gave us styrofoam containers with fruit, buns and jam to take on the road. We had some leftover beer and a bottle of wine that we couldn't take so we gave it to them. They seemed pleased.
We got to the border at Poipet at 8 am. As we arrived, there was an ongoing ceremony for the upcoming cremation of the king. In Phnom Penh, they're expecting a prayer vigil by between 1 and 2 million people.

 The small vigil at the border.

 Anita is in line waiting to get out of Cambodia. That line only took about 15 minutes.

Our taxi had left us in the hands of a guide for the taxi company who showed us which lines to get into. The border crossing is bedlam. After clearing the Cambodia border station, we walked with our packs about 200 or 300 metres to the Thai border station amidst a crowd of people. There we got into a massive lineup outside the building. As we stood there, hemmed in by a metal fence, we could see some other people walking past the lineup and into the building. After about 2 1/2 hours, a Cambodian guy asked the guard why hundreds of people were bypassing the line. He was told that they're "VIPs". The Cambodian, who spoke very good English, was fed up and said to us that it was a "shit process" and that it was embarrassing to him as a Cambodian that the Thai/Cambodian border was run like this. Basically, he said that there is no incentive to streamline the process because anybody in the know figures out who to pay off to get "VIP" status. Tour companies pay to get their clients past the line, for instance. So, having a long lineup of hundreds of frustrated people every day keeps the payoffs flowing. Why fix it?
While we stood in line and edged forward about 10 feet every 20 minutes or so, we got to know a young Spanish guy who was on his winter travels. Although he had a degree in naval engineering, he worked as a receptionist in a hotel on the island of Ibiza for 6 months every year because he liked it and he could spend a few months every winter travelling. He hadn't eaten that morning so Anita gave him some peanuts from her stash. Nice fellow.
Finally, we got into the building and after another half hour or so we got our passports stamped and got through. If you arrive with a passport and the entry card filled out, you get in. There's nothing to it. There's no reason to go through all this hassle.
At 11:15, after 3 1/4 hours of standing in lines, we were in Thailand. Our company guide found us again and called our Thai taxi to pick us up. We were worried that we wouldn't make it to Bangkok in time for our flight but the Thai roads are very good compared to the ones we'd traveled in Cambodia or Vietnam, so we made it to the Bangkok airport with time to spare. Check-in was a breeze and our flight left approximately on time.
It took a little over an hour to fly straight south over the Gulf of Thailand to Koh Samui (koh means island). Our luggage arrived with us, thankfully, and after a short delay, the driver from our hotel picked us up.It's about a 20 minute drive to our hotel, the Samui Sense Beach Resort on Lamai Beach on the southeast part of the island.
We were taken to our room on the 1st floor of one of the bigger buildings that has maybe 30 rooms in it. There was a powerful smell of cleanser and maybe mold in the room. We were so tired we weren't sure if it was really bad or not. After we ate at a little Thai restaurant across the street, we came back and fell into bed.
This morning we realized that the room was really bad and we weren't going to stay there. At the front desk, the manager hemmed and hawed a bit but it didn't take him long to give us a poolside villa at no extra charge. Obviously he's heard this complaint before.
Our new room is really nice. The beach is great. The hotel is actually quite good and the buffet breakfast (included) was excellent. For a little under $100 a night, this is a good deal for a beach vacation.
The coast of Koh Samui is very developed. There are tourist places all along the beach and there are shops, restaurants and bars in a long row on the street behind the hotels. Surprisingly, the beach isn't all that crowded but there sure is a lot of entertainment. It seems that the majority of the tourists here are Russian.
We just had another good dinner at the Thai restaurant across the street and went for a walk along the beach afterwards. We'll try to post a few pictures tomorrow.
If you ever have occasion to travel from Cambodia to Thailand or the reverse, do not cross by land at Poipet unless you've figured out how to be a VIP.