They ask for 1,000 Baht (about $33 USD), but it should be only $20 USD. They have official looking badges, but they are not with Immigration. They ask for a 100-300 Baht Fee, but there is no fee required. I am at the Cambodian/Thailand border crossing. The scams are everywhere.

We got up early to go to the Palin border between Thailand and Cambodia . This is not the border referred to in the opening lines, but a different border about 75 miles from Battambang. Villa and Samnang wanted to take me to the Palin border today, to look around.

I made the trip from Hoi An, Vietnam (20 hours on bus), back to Battambang. I came this route on my way back to Thailand. It gives me a chance to say goodbye to my Cambodian friends, and is the easiest way for me to cross back into Thailand.

Samnang picks me up at the hotel and we ride 17 miles to pick Villa up at his house. I took a picture of the view from Villa's house. He lives right next to the Killing Caves and Bat Caves. The mountain is a beautiful view from his house. This is how we met Villa. He goes to the mountain to talk to the foreigners that come there to visit

The three of us get on the moto and head for the border. This road to the border is one of the better I have seen in Cambodia . 

The boys stop to pay their respect to Buddha along the way and I buy a bookmark from one of the kids. Then, the flood of other kids swarm me. I hand the bookmark to Villa and some money and tell him to pay the boy. Before he can say anything, I push through the kids to escape and leave him to deal with them. He speaks Cambodian and can make them understand I do not want to buy a thousand bookmarks from all of them. He has trouble getting away from them also. "This is Cambodia", he says to me, laughing, when we meet later.

It takes us 2 1/2 hours to get to the border on the moto. The plan was to walk across the border to a big street market. The boys can go across with no problem, but if I leave the Cambodian side and enter the Thailand side, I will have to buy a new visa to get back into Cambodia. So, the market is out.

We eat and look at some of the Casinos. They are on the Cambodian side of the border but operated by Thais .

On the way back to Battambang, we stop to tour a Wat. Like the others, it is a beauty. It sits on a hill and has a tall, thinner, Buddha. We get caught in a downpour just as we reach the top of the hill. We wait an hour under a roof for the rain to stop. 

There has been some rain here the last few days, but everyone tells me the rainy season doesn't start until July, then there is a lot of flooding. They measure on their legs midway up their knee. This is how high the water can get in the streets. It floods the buildings in town sometimes. With all the dirt roads, this has to be a messy place to get around during the rainy season.

The rains stops after about an hour and we do a quick tour of the Wat. We make a few stops on the way back. One stop is at a resort. We climb the hill and decide to swim in the pool for a while. It's very relaxing and cools us off, since the rain stopped it has become very hot again .

The rains starts again on the way back to Battambang and we stop at a roadside lean-to that sells cheap raincoats. It's a messy ride back to town.

I plan to take a bus from Battambang to the Poipet border to cross into Thailand in a couple of days. It's about 100 kilometers from Battambang. A tuk tuk will pick me up at 5:30 a.m. and take me to the bus station.

I tell Samnang my plans to leave in a few days. He says not to take the tuk tuk to the bus station. He wants to pick me up on his moto and take me, so he can say goodbye at the station. I tell him that is very early for him, but he insists he wants to say goodbye at the station.

Two days later Villa tells me Samnang wants him to go with him and me to the border so they can say goodbye at the border. I tell them that will be great. I will buy them round trip tickets on the bus to the border, but they want to ride the moto instead .

They pick me and my backpack up and away we go, the 3 of us and my backpack on the little 125 Dream Honda.   

The Poipet border is known for the many scams there. On the Thai side there is a large, official looking building. People with official looking badges (but fake) intercept tourists and direct them to the building, where they charge them double for a Visa. It's a scam being run right in sight of the real Immigration Office. You can see the Thai Immigration from the scam building. Why do the officials let them operate right in sight of Immigration? It's the same way with the taxi scams at airports. The taxi scammers get to you as soon as you leave the planes. Just a little further is the place where the legitimate taxis are. Unsuspecting tourists don't know this and often take the scam taxis at a huge, rip-off price. Why are they allowed to operate there?

I have read up on the scams at the border, and make it through the real immigration with no problems . The boys, being Cambodians, enter a different way than I do into Thailand. They pay $6 each and get to cross the border to the big market for the day. They can't go further than the market. I go through immigration and get my visa for Thailand they they go through a different way. Using our cell phones, we eventually meet up on the Thailand side of the border. 

Villa has a sister that lives here and has a linen stand in the market, so we get to visit her and her husband and little boy, while touring the market. 

The sisters' selling stand also has some carpet mats for wiping your feet before entering a building. It makes me think, I have not seen one piece of carpet on any floor in any building since I have been traveling. It is always ceramic tile floors. Still, you have to remove your shoes at all the houses and a lot of hotels, and all the wats, and many other places.

We bought lunch from a seller . It's sticky rice. She put it in styrofoam containers and we ate it later. There were no eating tools given. The boys showed me how you just eat it with your fingers. 

The funny thing is, the night before we left, I treated them to pizza. I have only seen a couple of pizza places in Cambodia. One was in Siem Reap and the other here in Battambang. The locals don't eat there much because of the cost. Villa and Samnang had never eaten there but knew what pizza tasted like, so we went. They ate the pizza with a knife and fork and couldn't believe I was eating it with my hands. They also put ketchup on it. I told them you had to eat pizza with your hands, but they said the hands might be dirty. I said wash before eating. Still, they used the fork and knife. Now, here we are eating sticky rice with our hands. I mentioned the pizza and rice to them but they just laughed.

We look around the market and visit until 2 in the afternoon. Then, I catch my minibus ride to Pattaya and the boys start back home to Battambang. I get to Pattaya at 8:45 p.m. It was a long ride and I am back on the beach in Thailand.