Bangkok to Siem Reap

We were always concerned about this trip, we weren't sure about the visas and we didn't know what to expect in Cambodia. We certainly didn't expect what we got!
The previous evening we'd picked up our passports (good to see them again!) and in them were what looked like Cambodian visas - all good so far.
We were being picked up from the travel agent at 7:30am by some guy called Somphon(!?). This was the first hurdle passed. He took us to the end of the road and left us there with a handful of other people. We were a bit concerned now as there was no sign of a bus. 3o minutes later and a big bus turns up - another hurdle passed.
We got in the bus and headed off towards the border. This was all going so well, we were very chuffed.
We were quite skeptical about the whole thing as it was only costing us 300Bhat (NZ$12, GBP4) to travel about 400km from one country to another.
The bus trip to the border was great, nice bus and real easy drive (although it did rain torrentially). We arrived at a guest house 10 minutes from the border where you can sort out visas, although we'd already done ours so were feeling quite smug. Bit of lunch and we were all set to go.
I was feeling good at this point.
A short bus trip to the border and we all jump off and walk to the checkpoint (the bus doesn't go into Cambodia, we change onto another bus on the other side of the checkpoint).
The checkpoint leaving Thailand was very straightforward, just a couple of minutes then we walked out and across a bridge into Cambodia, There was another checkpoint on the Cambodian side that we had to clear but that just took 10 minutes of queueing and we were through that. The whole place didn't look very strict as the locals just seemed to wander straight past the checkpoint without a second glance. I think if you look a bit Thai and have no shoes you can just wander straight into the country without any passport at all.
This is where it started getting interesting. Cambodia is one of the poorest countries in Asia and the tar-sealed road ended at the border. Just muddy tracks from here on. And did I mention it had just been raining. So mud everywhere and huge puddles of water. We got on a crappy looking bus but were told that this is only to ferry us to the bus terminal where we would get on the real bus for the rest of the journey. Once we had bounced the 2 kms to the bus station we got off the bus (avoiding the puddles by parking on the pavement) and transferred to a much, much worse bus. The seats were hardly padded, except for ours which had no padding, the windows rattled and air conditioning was called 'opening the windows and going fast'.
The guide told us that the roads would be very bumpy for the first 50km and then for the remaining 100km it would just be bumpy.
The journey of 150km took 7 hours of driving. The roads were little more than mud tracks, and it was 40kms in before I realised that they drove on the right in this country - we just spent our time zig-zagging down the road avoiding the bugger pot-holes with on coming vehicles passing either side of us.
Our comfort options were either windows open for cooling or windows closed for not getting mud sprayed in your face.
Once it got dark we had to stop regularly to clean the mud from the windscreen and lights so that the driver could see.
We eventually made it to Siem Reap at about 10pm (the last 5km were on luxurious tar-sealed roads). We found ourselves a nice hotel to stay at and we had a go and cleaning most of the mud and sweat off our bodies before we lay our bruised and battered bodies down for the night.