Surviving Cambodia Pt 1: Bad Omens

The Omen

Looking down at my broken phone, just hours away from leaving for Cambodia, I couldn’t help but wonder if my friend’s death was indeed the ill-fated omen I feared it was…

It was just a few days prior to leaving when I was on Facebook and found a post made by my friend’s sister explaining that my friend Blake had just died. Upon seeing the words, fear and anxiety hit me like a tsunami, immediately dropping me to my knees in the middle of a fish market in Thailand.

Blake and I had formed a friendship over a shared supernatural experience on a train as we were returning from our separate trips to Oregon to see the Solar Eclipse in 2017. He happened to be the only witnesses to a conversation I had with a woman who claimed to be possessed by a demon. He was half asleep at the table next to me when I found myself face to face with an alleged demon who was speaking through a woman we spent the last 8 hours talking to. Only now, she and I are the only people awake and after she had experienced some very strange stomach pains I found myself 20 minutes later having a heated conversation about when her possession took place and how I considered the demon’s description of itself to be the description of a “virus.”

This created a very volatile tone throughout the whole conversation and left me unnerved about the whole encounter by the time it was over. I started that conversation thinking I was speaking to a mentally ill woman and I left the conversation feeling unsure about whether I just encountered a legitimate spirit or a schizophrenic. And Blake, he was there in the background fading in and out of consciousness the whole time, hearing mainly the tapping of her nails on the table as he explained to me later. When I showed him the video footage I recorded his mouth damn near hit the floor. Neither of us expected that from her, making it all the more strange and eerie

In the following months my life quickly plummeted into chaos and the result was me leaving my life behind and embarking on the adventure I’m currently still experiencing. The drastic turn of events in my life only created more belief that I had real contact with something that pushed the boundaries of my reason. Luckily, as my previous posts state, I was able to start a new and amazing life. It would seem my friend was not so lucky. It was thirteen months after the train incident that Blake met his untimely death at the age of 33.  And now here I was, also 33, just three days away from leaving Thailand for Cambodia, staring down at my phone, scanning the post over and over hoping that I was just misreading it. Unfortunately, it was true, and I had no details on the cause of his death leaving me nothing but my imagination to ponder the circumstances of his demise.

The next few days were to be very trying on my nerves as I kept thinking about my friend and what could have happened to him. I was preparing to leave for Cambodia, but I was really starting to have second thoughts about the trip altogether. I probably would have abandoned the whole thing if it weren’t for the fact that my Visa was about to expire, leaving me no choice but to leave Thailand. What motivated me more than that though, was the fact that I was completely broke by this time and was honestly ready to fly home. The thing is, I only bought a one-way ticket to Thailand thinking I was going to just wander around sleeping on streets and staying in hostels for a few months and then I would just buy a ticket back when I was ready. This being my first time overseas and having to figure it all out by myself, I neglected to think about fluctuating prices for plane tickets that were based on time of year and what airport you fly into.

Because of the fact I was basically broke, the primary financiers of this trip were to be some of my family who were being supportive of my travels and wanted me to see more of South East Asia before I left. This would be the main reason why I would keep moving forward once in Cambodia, even when I should have called it quits. Well, that and I wanted to know if I could accomplish something amazing, something that would shock even myself… But we will get to that, for now, let’s get back to my broken phone.

Day of Departure

It was 9am. I woke up early because I still had to stop by a Western Union before I left so I could pick up some money my mom had sent me for my birthday. This was being added to the $300 dollars given to me by my family in Thailand on behalf of my auntie who owns the house I was living in while visiting there. I wake up, make a coffee, shower and get dressed then hop on a song-tow (a pick-up truck with two rows of benches to sit on) and head over to the destination where my google maps is telling me to go. I get off the truck and walk into the parking lot of a huge grocery center, something equivalent to a Costco in the United States. I head inside trying to find the Western Union, but I don’t see it anywhere. I stop to ask for directions.

“Yu Tee Nye, Western Union?”, I asked the guy mopping in front of me.

He grabbed my phone and then pointed behind him at a Bank with a Western Union sign in the window. I laugh at how blind I am and go to take the phone back, but it slipped, either from my hand or his… I want to say his but let’s be honest, it was probably me. This wouldn’t be the first time I dropped this cracked, smashed and warped phone, so why would now be different?

I picked the phone up and the screen was black, which doesn’t mean much really unless it won’t turn back on. Which is exactly what happened… or didn’t happen. The phone didn’t turn back on. I stopped for a moment and thought to myself,

“This is it, I’m going to die in Cambodia. The spirits got my friend and now they’re coming for me too.”

And now here I was, leaving for Cambodia, a walking dead man, and I haven’t even received my birthday money yet. The information for Western Union was all in my phone in Facebook messenger. I go outside and begin accessing the extra phone I was given by a cousin of mine in Thailand. She gave me the phone temporarily, so I could connect to Wi-Fi while I was in their country. Thank god I had that because at least I could communicate with people through Facebook, but that was pretty much it. Since the phone was bought in Thailand everything in the phone was written in Thai. I was able to figure out how to get the language to change for downloaded Apps, but I could never get it to change on the internet for accessing my email and most google searches, which as luck would have it would be yet another thing that worked against me while staying in Cambodia. While I’m figuring all of this out a bird happens to shit right on my bag as I’m standing outside working on my phone situation. This day keeps getting better.

I finish accessing Facebook and all the vital information I need to get the money and I head back in the store and then into the bank. I was in and out quickly without any problems and then continued on my way. I took another song-tow truck to Chonburi to catch a bus to a place my grandma in Thailand told me to me to go, but I can’t even remember the name of it now because no one I asked knew about it either. I rode three different motorcycle taxi’s visiting three different bus stations and none of them heard of this city.

Finally, I settle on a place and just tell them to take me to the much talked about, Aranyaprathet/Poi pet border crossing. From what I gathered based on my researches before my phone broke, the reason my grandma wanted me to go through another border was because of how dangerous this place is. I tried my hardest to avoid the place as I had no desire to be conned and scammed while I’m already confused in a foreign country by myself. But alas, I had no choice.

I get into a van, two hours after being dropped off, and finally begin my journey to Cambodia. I spent most of the four-hour ride accessing everything I needed on my cousin’s phone for the trip ahead, and I had to do it while I still had phone reception in Thailand. This consisted mainly of locating the cheapest hostels in Siem Reap and making sure I had music downloaded on Spotify for offline listening and access to Facebook and Instagram, so I could continue documenting my trip overseas. I am after all trying to figure out what exactly Journeys and Insights really is, and how to evolve it. To do that, “the show must go on.”

The ride to the border was for the most part uneventful. That is, until I received a message in my Facebook Messenger from an ex-girlfriend of Blake’s who wanted to know if I knew how he died. I of course didn’t but wanted to know why she would ask me. It turns out she and I had met one time when Blake and I were hanging out in San Francisco and he apparently talked about me enough that she thought I would have some more information than the family was giving out. I had not, but she then sent me the last message Blake sent to her. It would seem like the psychobabble ramblings of a paranoid drug addict if you were anyone but me.

Blake mentioned that people, or something, was after him and that he couldn’t explain it but that his life was in danger. My eyes were wide open. I’m in this cramped van hugging my huge backpack, staring down infinity, heart pounding and mind racing, remembering that a little over a year ago I was saying the same exact thing and I ended up dropping my entire life in California to move up to the mountains of a National Park to live and work, which eventually led to me traveling. But here I am now reading this message and thinking, there’s no way I’m not dying a horrible death in Cambodia. I mean really, how many coincidences equal a synchronicity?

 Border of Mordor

The van stopped in some random parking lot in the middle of nowhere and the driver told everyone to get out. Once I stepped outside I saw that there were a handful of colorful Tuk-Tuk’s waiting to take us to the border, so I hopped in one of them. Ten minutes later I made it to the border and my tuk-tuk driver dropped me off right in front of a Visa office. I was instantly face to face with a guy telling me to follow him to the counter to apply for my Visa. I have no clue what’s going on or what I’m supposed to do because this is my first time crossing a border in Asia by land, so I just follow the guy to the counter blindly trusting him.

I was told at the counter that I needed a photo for my visa and I didn’t have one, so I now had to follow this guy through a labyrinth of shady alleys, then through a crowd until we came upon a rope tied to cones that we stepped over, which I believe was the border line.  I then went into a shop in the back corner of a crazy looking market place to get my photo taken. This all seemed unofficial to me but what else was I going to do? I handed over 100 Thai Baht to the photographer and he takes my picture. Ten minutes later he hands me a tiny zip lock bag with four of my pictures in it. The guy who took me here then leads me back through all the madness until I’m finally back at the Visa counter filling out my paperwork.

Before I even finish my paperwork I am now sitting at a table with four guys, hawking over me like hungry vultures just waiting for an opportunity to screw me over. They all start asking me questions, fishing for information that gives them some idea of who they’re dealing with. It’s probably as plain as my American face that I’m out of my element. While I’m still filling out my Visa application they’re trying to explain some convoluted and very complicated process of what to expect when crossing the border and each step involved me handing over money. It’s obvious to me that I’m being scammed but I have no frame of reference on what the proper procedures are, so I’m stuck having to improvise and figure out what’s a con what’s not as I went along.

As soon as I finish my application the four guys escort me to a bridge that I must go up in order to check in with someone for entry into the country. But before I head up one of the guys asks me for a tip, telling me that if I tip him then the other guy will meet me on the other side and help save me 30 extra dollars. This situation immediately conjured the image of paying trolls to cross a bridge which made me not believe them for a second because the mental image of trolls was too much hilarity for me to bear. But then again, I also didn’t want to get screwed for not tipping so I handed over some Thai Baht and went up the bridge and checked in. When I came out the other side there were still three guys waiting for me and they quickly approached me telling me that I need to pay another 600 baht for a military stamp so I can get into the country. I looked at them and told them I am in the country and I’m not paying for a military stamp. Another guy standing there told me I could just walk up fifty yards and get a stamp for free at the real entry into Cambodia. I was utterly confused by this point as the guys asking me for a military stamp began asking me for a tip since I’m not buying the stamp. I again oblige because I don’t want to get jumped or stabbed later for not going along with their operation.

I walk over to the official place to have my passport stamped but now the guy who gave me that advice is now following me over to the office and telling me what to expect when I leave. I begin to realize that he doesn’t plan on leaving my side. I’m already exhausted and now I realize I just handed over a ton of money just to get here and this guy is still wanting more. I don’t know how much I just lost getting through the border, but I know I’m on a tight budget and I can’t keep forking over money just because I’m afraid of it coming back to haunt me. Besides, I’m still unnerved about my whole day and this is not making things better.

After about thirty minutes I finally get through the line and get my stamp but when I leave the office the guy is standing right there. He’s insisting on showing me the right Taxi driver to take to Siem Reap. I tell him I want to take a bus. He then tells me they are closed and don’t run until morning. I say that’s fine with me and that I’ll just sleep outside until morning. He insisted that was a horrible idea as this area is dangerous, so he tried to show me a hostel, but they wanted to charge me 600 Baht for a room which is ridiculous and so I told him no and went to find my own Hostel. It was then that I noticed there were busses still running to take people to Siem Reap and I called him out about that. He conceded defeat on the matter of the bus which still cost me 500 Baht but at least I was soon to be rid of this troll. It would take another full hour before I gave this nefarious shadow man a dollar to get me water, which he offered to do, but then I never got my water and I never saw him again.

Entering the Khmer Kingdom

Another hour or so passed by before I heard a woman yelling at me over the sound of my blaring headphones telling me to get on the bus. The bus was a horrendous, psychedelic, 1970’s looking hippie van made into a bus and it was still rolling as I was approaching it. I had to run up to the door to catch it and the driver looked annoyed at how long it was taking me to catch up. No consideration about the amount of weight I was hauling in my oversized backpack; which was forty-four pounds if we’re going to count. I finally get on the bus and now I’m getting excited thinking about the fact that I’m almost to a bed where I can get some much-needed rest. I couldn’t sleep on the bus because I was seated right under a leak in the air conditioning and I was getting drops of freezing cold liquid dropped on me from some random hanging pipe right above me. 

The ride seemed to last forever because we kept stopping at random spots to pick up large packages that I only at this time noticed took up more than half the room on the bus. I thought I was seated at the back of the bus before I got out at one of the stops to smoke a cigarette and when I looked up at my window I realized the bus was more than double the size I thought it was. Even after the infinite amount of stops we took, which I came to believe was a ploy to bring business to local restaurants and businesses, we finally made it to Siem Reap and I was more than ready to arrive. The bus took me to the end of what was obviously a main road in and out of Siem Reap but decided to take me to the literal edge of town and drop me off. This of course was another ploy to get me to have to pay for a tuk-tuk driver, which I did. The driver picked me up approximately two miles outside of Pub Street which is where all the cheap hostels were at. I ended up paying 400 Baht for the ride because I hadn’t yet figured out the conversion rates from Baht to Riel, or what I would finally found out soon to be the dollar.

I get dropped off two blocks away from the middle of town in Pub Street in Siem Reap and I spend the next hour looking for hostels or a place outside to rest and wait until morning to continue my search. I walk into a few hostels, but they were all overpriced in my opinion, since I hadn’t yet figured out what the damage was from crossing the border. So, I keep looking and finally come upon a Chinese hostel called International Taipei Youth Hostel and I walk in and lay down every American dollar and Thai baht I have attempting to pay for a six-dollar room. The guy at the desk tells me they don’t take baht and so I leave and start looking for a place to sleep in the streets. There was a gorgeous park area near the middle of the downtown Pub Street area that I thought about sleeping in, but I thought buying a beer would help me sleep better so I stopped by a grocery store that was still open. Beers were thirty-five cents a can, so I was stoked. And in that moment, I realized I could exchange my baht for American dollar when I buy the beer and so that’s what I did.

I then return to the hostel and try to book a room again but now the guy is telling me that I don’t have enough. I frantically start searching for more money to go back to the grocery store, but the gentleman tells me it’s okay, I can pay tomorrow he says. I thank him, and he takes me to my room. I finally see the sweet, beautiful sight of a bed and a shower and I thank the gentleman for the room and the hospitality and head to bed. But before I do I head out to the roof balcony to smoke a cigarette and enjoy the victory of making it here. There was a guy sleeping in the bed in the room I was placed in, he woke up when I went out for a smoke and he joined me. He was an Australian bloke and we shot the shit and had a beer together for a few minutes and then he offered me a valium to sleep and I accepted. Everything seemed perfect, I was given great service, rescued from what seemed to be a less than ideal situation, and I made a new friend already. I thought the worst was over, but I couldn’t have been more wrong…

… TO BE CONTINUED