Day 1

After a long day of flying (with a dull 5-hour layover in the Beijing airport), I made it to Bangkok around midnight. Unfortunately, the airport shuttle buses had just stopped running, so I took a taxi to the Hua Lumpong train station. It was dark and creepy and there were homeless men sleeping out front everywhere...but my little guesthouse - The Train Inn - was just around the corner and it was bright and cheerful and welcoming.

(Plane wing, and the book that got me through my flights)

(Train Inn lobby, and welcome refreshment)

(Room at The Train Inn)

I crashed for about 4 hours in a well-air-conditioned room, then was up at 5am to board the Aranyapruthet-bound train at 5:30. The train didn't actually leave until 6:30, and it was 1 o'clock before I tumbled off of it - hot, sweaty, and frizzy-haired, but not the least bit rumpled in spirit. ;)

And then things really got interesting. Thankfully I met a guy, Matt, on the last stretch of the train-trip who had done this border crossing several times. He let me tag along with him, which ended up saving me a lot of money and hassles. First we took a tuk-tuk to the Immigration Office in Poipet, where I got a visa-on-arrival with relatively little pain and walked across the border into "The Kingdom of Cambodia."

I had only had a bottle of green tea all day, and it was nearly 2 in the afternoon, so Matt suggested that we buy coconuts on the side of the road and slurp the yummy milk through straws while we negotiated a fare for the next leg of our journey. We ended up getting a fantastic deal. Usually it costs around $45 to hire a share-taxi from Poipet to Siem Reap. We got hooked up with a driver who was headed home to Siem Reap for the day anyways, along with 4 of his friends, and they let us squish in with them for $6. It was a hot, sticky 2.5 hour ride with 7 people, several backpacks and bags, and a ukulele crammed into the little car.
We stopped for a snack on the way out of town - and by snack, I mean a bag of fried beetles, crickets, and grasshoppers. Mmm. haha.

Then we stopped at a little restaurant about halfway through the journey for a meal of chicken tom-yum soup and beef & rice (luk-luk?). I had the rare (and hopefully never repeated!) experience of having a chicken's eyeball juice squirted all over my lap when Matt popped it into his mouth. Thankfully there was only one eyeball in our bowl of soup, so I was spared having to try one for myself.
We go to Siem Reap around 5:30. I checked into my guesthouse ("Home Sweet Home"), took a cool shower, and walked around the Old Market and the Night Market. Had eggplant & pork soup for dinner. Siem Reap has a really chilled out feeling, with pretty lights along the river at night.
I'll add pictures and videos when I find a computer with a USB port - this one at the guesthouse is ancient.

***Update: pictures and videos have now been uploaded. :)