I felt like this part of the journey gets a blog to itself. It’s only one day in comparison to the other Backpacker Series blog posts. But I feel that we would have benefited a great deal from reading something like this. We had the challenge of the famous Thailand to Cambodia border crossing just six days into our time away and we could have done with this knowledge before hand…
So, we had had our time in Bangkok and it was time for somewhere new. Ok, let’s head to Siem Reap in Cambodia. We were speaking with a fellow traveller who had done this route before and warned us about the visas and the crossing of countries. He just said to be careful when you get there not to get scammed, ask them to take you to the official border, the cost is $30. Seemed simple enough. It didn’t fill us with much hope, but oh well, let’s just book the bus over anyway.
We found a transfer shop just across the road from the Bangkok hostel. We booked our one-way bus fare to Siem Reap for the next morning and packed our bags up, to make sure we were ready to go.
After yet another heavy night in Bangkok, we dragged our sorry, hungover butts back across the street to where the bus would collect us from that morning. There were seven other travellers, as well as us, all heading in the same direction. Each with the same “we’ve had two hours sleep” look on their faces. I felt like we were all in good hands with each other to fall on.
The bus drove for a good four hours before reaching a tiny restaurant on the side of the road. Stop for lunch maybe? Nope.
“This is where you pay us to get a visa for Cambodia”.
Ummm, no, this is a place I can order chicken fried rice, not a Cambodian visa. They took us to the back of the tiny café into another room which I would best describe as an en-suite sized shack. Thatched walls with bordered up windows. A single desk which had a stack of papers and a calculator on it. Two plastic chairs for these Thai men to sit, and a random Thai woman holding her child in the corner of the room. A classic, random as hell, Thai scenario.
“You pay $40 now or we don’t take you any further”. Brilliant.
We had been warned about this before by that other traveller, but how do we know how far the Cambodia border is? Can we walk there from here? No Wi-Fi of course in the café. Of all the places in Thailand not to have Wi-Fi, what a shock this was. What if we paid the Thai men and the visa wasn’t valid? What if it wasn’t an official visa?
We looked at the other travellers there and they looked just as confused as us. We told them about our conversation with this other traveller. So, we grouped together and told these Thai men to take us to the border. They then started taking our bags off the bus and said “nope, we don’t go any further”. So, what choice did we have after this?
I saw a solo traveller having a conversation with one of the Thai men outside; I thought at the time they would probably be talking about his bag being chucked around. (He comes back into the story later).
One couple braved the first hand over of money; we all then followed suit. At least we were all in the same boat. After they took our passports and gave us “the visas”, it was time to get back into the minivan again and drive.. two minutes. No joke. Two minutes, ten minutes’ walk tops. Are you kidding?! We could have walked this no problem. Oh well, it’s done.
They dropped us, chucked our bags at us, pointed at the end of the road (a literal bridge from Thailand to Cambodia) and the driver’s final words were “someone pick you up over there”, and drove off. Oh dear.
We all looked at each other in the group, equally confused, equally annoyed that we had just been dumped, most probably ripped off, and still all equally hungover. Right, time to start walking. We all flung our backpacks across our shoulders and just started walking straight. We saw ‘entrance’ written somewhere in English so just followed this until we came to another “official building” At least this one had all four walls, so it seemed more legit in comparison to the other that we had just been scammed in.
Now the moment of truth. The officer took one of our passports and then took his sweet time looking inside. It was one of those sweaty palm moments that you just didn’t know what to say or do. Thoughts start spiraling in your head that you could end up in a Thai prison for been a fraud. This could be the end of our travel journey as we know it.
After he checked the document over he finally handed it back to us. RESULT. It was in fact an official visa, phew. So now we continue to wander across this bizarre street that separated these two countries apart. As we started walking across the no-man’s land there were quite a few characters I tell you. Beggars on either side of the bridge, farmers crossing cattle over and armed police with huge guns patrolling up and down.
When we got across the other side there was indeed a minibus waiting for us. We must have just looked very out of place, so they knew who they were picking up. Get us away from here as quickly as possible.
When inside the minibus I asked the solo traveller what he was discussing with the man outside. He then told us that he knew that the Thai men were scamming us and that the crossing was just ten minutes up the road, because he had done the route before. The Thai man had told him not to say anything to us otherwise they will stick him with a hefty fine, so he kept his mouth shut.
So guys, this is the border crossing tip for you, pretend you have done it before to get yourself to the official border. They will charge you $30 at the actual official desk; you don’t need to pay anymore. If you are being charged with more than that you are probably in the wrong place. Even if you haven’t done it before. Confidence is the best thing in this situation.
Let me know if you have any further questions about the crossing, I will be happy to answer these on my contact me page.
LEAH HANCOX 