We made it safe to Siem Reap.
Day one and the culture shock is already hitting us hard. From the visa process at the airport, until our trial to ditching tuk-tuks to go back home.
Let’s start with our first interesting happening:
*VISA ON ARRIVAL*
All the passengers looked like they needed to get a visa on arrival so the line got quite crowded very fast.
We had to fill out the form before landing, and we noticed that we needed a photo to stick on the form. We decided to wait until our arrival to see if there would be a photo booth of some sort to use. Obviously, there was none so we went ahead and lined up with the rest of the crowd.
The fee was set at $30. We handed the officer a $100 bill just to see it refused and be asked to pay with a brand new one. No worries, we had a couple of 20s so we managed to use them and pay for both our fees PLUS the no photo fine: $2 each. Yup, they charged every single person that was on that flight $2 for not having an ID photo.
*tuktuk wars*
Be ready to be “yelled at” at every step by a tuktuk trying to get your attention to use their mean of transportation. And be ready to negotiate… EVERY SINGLE TIME.
After a tiring negotiation to get the tuktuk to take us to our eatery of the night for $1 ( a couple of them asked for $3), we decided that renting a bicycle would ease up our mind for the following days. Keeping our fingers crossed as the complete lack of traffic lights makes all drivers become daredevils around here.
*CREDIT CARDS*
Be careful using credit cards because they’ll charge you an insane amount for that.
At a “mini mart”, the cashier added a $10 fee for using the credit card on our $4 bill of water and snacks. We were lucky we had a bit of cash left.
*CASH and CARDS”
Popular travel websites would tell you that Cambodia uses all the big currencies for most transactions… No, they don’t.
Our everlasting $100 bill was refused for being old by pretty much everyone in Siem Reap claiming it was too old. Our Yen was not welcome either and when we tried using Euros, they used their own “exchange rate”.
So be careful people, and keep your money crisp and new.
And head to “Lucky Mall” for withdrawing. The “mall” has an ATM machine that accepts foreign cards. Withdrawal fee is set at $5 for each transaction while the max to withdraw is set at $250.
Stay tuned for next.