“That’s bollocks”

Towards the end of flight between Perth and Singapore after watching two movies (Warhorse and A few best men) I listened to some Coldplay, not music I would usually choose but being a person who finds inspiration from lyrics I can usually put aside musical taste... In the song ‘Every tear drop is a waterfall’ there is a line that goes something like “maybe I’m in the gap between the two trapeze” a lyric that probably best summed up how I was feeling leaving the relatively safe and comfortable life of Western Australia and onto the less comfortable part of our journey into SE Asia. In this moment I hang in the gap experiencing daily fears of falling sick and trying to concentrate on reaching to a different climate and culture yet in the same day find some exhilaration of flying as I see how a day unfolds, how random people come into our lives for moments that cause the heart to find courage and tells the mind we can survive in a strange land. We are in Cambodia.

Getting to Cambodia meant crossing a border, the procedure was like something out of the TV drama series ‘Hustle’. We arrived at the border town by train and were taken to the border crossing by tuk-tuk. I tried to emphasis to the driver that we had our visa so don’t bother with the scam (a widely known occurrence) so I wasn’t quite sure what would happen next. The tuk-tuk pulled up at Visa control and all looked official, they reassured us we wouldn’t pay anything, I thought this is was ok so far. After filling in the departure forms, they told us about the buses that ran to Siem Reap and ‘cheap’ ticket prices if we use the ‘government buses’. We didn’t want to buy tickets until we crossed so left and walked to the crossing. It wasn’t until we reached the Cambodia border that we saw the same forms being filled in there and realised the office we had visited was indeed ‘unofficial’ and the buses they tried to sell were not public transport and indeed over priced - these guys are good! As we lined up for the Cambodia passport and visa check a young man from London came in behind us – having realised that he had just paid $20 more for his visa he declared “That’s bollocks”. But for every scam that I heard other travellers moaning about I laughed inside at the countries that run the million dollar ‘scams’, putting it simply many products and services I buy in the UK are marked up at least 100% for profit of the company and to bless the shareholder. This is a widely known but generally excepted scam, but a scam none the less!

So a couple of evenings later at the youth hostel in Siem Reap we sit down after a tiring day visiting the temples of Ankor Wat and play the card game Uno. Hayley puts down the winning card and in response Yasmin throws her cards on the table and declares ‘That’s bollocks’. There was a short and silent pause as everyone looked at her and in turn she wondered what she had said for us to all stop what we were doing and look at her…followed by a great deal of laughter!

Mark