Days 76 to 78 - Sat Jan 17 to Mon Jan 19 - HKK to BKK to PP

Our next few days have the repetitive rhythm of a nursery song.

In Huizhou we catch a bus
...that takes us to Hong Kong
...where we catch a plane that takes us to Bangkok
...where we take a taxi
...that takes us to our hostel
...where we take another taxi the next day back to the airport
...where we catch a plane that takes us to Phnom Penh
...where we catch a taxi that takes us to our hostel.

The airplane (with over night in Bangkok) was one of two ways we looked at getting to Cambodia. The cheaper version would have involved going through a border town called Poi Pet. I vetoed this. It's not a dangerous place, necessarily, but any description I've ever read of crossing the Thai border requires a couple of days and involves multiple stages (from bus to hostel to taxi to bus, etc) as well as a lot of scam dodging at each of those stages. Even a year off from work is not long enough for me to want to waste any of my time on a trip like that. Pierre is a little disappointed with our decision to fly since Poi Pet sounded interesting (cheaper) to him, but in the end the alternative ("You take the bus, I'll fly and we'll meet in Phnom Penh") wasn't very appealing.

We spend the first day wandering the city and getting used to the traffic and heat, figuring out what there is to see and where to find it.

Here's a random shot of a food cart in Bangkok:


photo credit: D