Borderline

Budget travelling usually runs the risk of sending you on wild goose chases. So it could easily have been early this morning following some very sketchy arrangements to wait on a patch of street on the Khao San Road for a bus pick-up for the journey to Cambodia. I was convinced no one was coming and that I'd be stranded with the ladyboys giving me the glad eye and slurring backpackers draining the dregs of last night's booze. However the agent did arrive and I boarded a bus towards the border accompanied by an eclectic gang of Thai grannies and expressionless, emaciated travellers.

I'm not well travelled in Thailand so it was interesting to watch the world go by. Provincial Thailand is a similar but more moneyed version of most areas of Cambodia. The border between Aranyaprathet in Thailand and Poipet in Cambodia is the most commonly used crossing in Cambodia as most people heading for Angkor Wat will pass through it. I haven't crossed here before but by all accounts it's a hotbed of scams.

These emerged via some funny business between the bus driver, a restaurant owner, and a number of 'facilitators'. Masquerading as helpfulness, I'm sure there were various low level scams at play, as the border itself transpired to be simple. All the passengers were funnelled into an isolated restaurant to wait, where the bus driver was surprisingly interested in people ordering meals and helping with visa forms as various passengers were persuaded they needed to be ferried on the back of motorbikes to acquire passport photos and extra bits of documentation. It was an interesting process to watch. The facilitators were clearly looking for people with any complicated situation, such as overstaying their Thai visa, so they could help 'smooth it over' at the border, and benefit from whatever money would exchange hands. Maybe it's all fair game and part of parcel of travelling.

I was in possession of an e-visa for Cambodia so was of less interest and was able to bat away offers of interference, but I do feel that losing one's own agency like this is a surefire way to aggravate experienced travellers and exploit naive ones.

After a long, slow journey and what I hope is the most arduous day of this holiday, I reached Battambang, Cambodia's second city, in the early evening and settled down for a few days. So far I'm just feeling generally agog at the pace of change here since I last came to Battambang in August 2015.

I'm content at the prospect of a peaceful Christmas here before I move onto Siem Reap for my friend Allison's wedding and then the arrival of my old pal Adam who's joining me for a week. It's all going to be very good fun.

It never stops being weird to be in the tropics in flip flops in December, however it's more appealing than freezing one's nads off in a station, ahead of jamming into a packed train home on Christmas Eve, and paying 80 quid for a journey of 1h 45mins.

Various people in Phnom Penh make a thing of documenting t-shirts with strange slogans. Seen today on a woman at the border: 'Yes I am fat and yes I will eat you.' She was average sized.

The image is of the Democracy Monument in Bangkok, which occupies a major intersection. It symbolises the 1932 establishment of a constitutional monarchy.