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Today the alarm went off at five thirty and it broke our hearts... Typically I had fallen in to my first deep sleep since arriving and was gutted at having to get up after a mere three hours. We packed the last of our things and ventured downstairs where Jen was sitting on the porch with Barney (the dog...not brother). Not long after DJ arrived and we said our good byes to Jen and piled in to the tuk tuk... DJ then suggested a bakery en route to the bus so we happily obliged. We were feeling shattered and bread is always the answer in such times of despair... We arrived at the bakery and Steven purchased some mini baguettes before jumping back into the tuk tuk and speeding off in the direction of the bus stop. On arrival there was a bit of a palaver as it had turned out that due to a miscommunication they had been waiting yesterday morning for us and obviously we hadn't showed up. This didn't really change anything but I think they wanted us to know.
We climbed on the bus and saw it was a sleeper bus (the sun loungers ...remember) and were happy to see the bus was pretty empty so got a whole double seat to our selves.... The bus ride was quite bumpy heading to the border but I managed to get some sleep eventually. I had climbed onto the bottom bunk as it was a lot cooler and Steven soon followed. Soon enough we were informed that we had arrived at the Cambodia-Thailand border and we had to now get off the bus. We grabbed our bags and looking a bit lost, two girls told us to stick with them and so we followed them as they headed through departures. The departure process was relatively easy but I some how managed to bump in to a monk... I was mortified (women should never touch a monk) and apologised profusely but he just laughed and said it was okay.
We headed off towards Thailand over the friendship bridge (which is the boundary) and onto Thailand immigration which was much further than I thought. We then entered the nice air conditioned arrivals lounge but were (as usual) in the slow queue again ...mostly because the immigration officer was chatting up every woman that came through. Next to us the young couple of girls who assisted us told the officers they were heading to the hostel we were staying at in Bangkok... pretty coincidental but it happens a lot to us! Eventually we got our passport stamped and headed outside and back into Thailand. You could tell you were back in Thailand because they charge you for everything ...even to use the toilet.
We had been given a yellow sticker by the tour company to signify which bus we were on, then were shepherded together and split in half. The young girl who assisted us had lost her sticker and said she would have to pay again although she did eventually rectify the situation by finding a receipt or something. We climbed on to a small pick up and got taken to a cafe (for obviously overpriced food) where we had to wait about 45 minutes before our mini bus eventually arrived to take us to Bangkok. By now I was feeling shattered and vouched never to do a border crossing again. The mini bus was fine and for once we were not all crammed in.. although the air conditioning was not really doing its stuff so we were pretty hot. We had a monk sitting next to us and we were told to be careful as women can't touch a monk under any circumstances otherwise big trouble for them (flashback horror!!). The trip to the Thai capital took roughly four hours but it passed relatively quickly. We stopped at our old favourite 7-11 after about three hours, which we had missed for our cheap pot noodles and cornettos. We couldn't hold off our hungover urges anymore and bought two cornettos and a bag of crisps.... Mine was a green tea cornetto and it was delicious.
Not far from Bangkok Steven must have fallen asleep because all I can remember is him suddenly laughing... he had been stopped by the girl behind us after falling asleep and nearly falling onto the monk sitting beside us, haha would have been a funny picture! He must have dozed off and just started drifting, he stayed a wake after that thankfully. Once we arrived in Bangkok we got dropped off at one of Bangkok's Sky train stations.... Which was very handy for us as we knew our way from there ... we had done this all before, so paid the fee and headed to our station near our hostel. Although more expensive then Cambodia, it was really good to be back somewhere familiar.
We arrived back to De Talak hostel and welcomed the air conditioning lobby and rooms. Also it was nice to have free tea, coffee and water on tap.... Plus they had now thrown in free ice cream which Steven loved the idea of. We settled into our mixed dorm and then I decided to catch up with the blogs.... We had been so busy that we had neglected them a bit. Later on Steven headed to a local 7-11 for some noodles and snacks, the closest of which was attached to a convention centre nearby. He unfortunately took a wrong turn through an electronic convention happening that day, which was packed and took him a good 15 minutes to get through the crowds.... Can't have been too bad though as he came back full of information on an MacBook Pro. Eventually he found the shop, stocked up on some goods and headed back to the hostel where I was chilling out on the cushions trying to write the blogs while a loud American guy chatted next to me.
We were both very tired and knew we had a lot to do tomorrow so once we had munched our noodles we grabbed an early night ready for the trials of shopping tomorrow!
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