Cambodia Visa Run

Market in Battambang, Cambodia

Chiang Mai to Bangkok to Cambodia

It's getting that time I have to do another visa run. I had planned it so that I would not be in Chiang Mai for Songkran, The Water Festival. as it is euphemistically known. Actually its a free-for-all water fight from morning to night, led by young drunken backpackers. And they don't hesitate using the filthy water from the moat of the city.
This is the THAI New Year. The Thai also celebrate the POPULAR New Year on January 1st, the CHINESE New Year in February and their own new year at the end of the dry season.

I considered going to Lao and continuing on to Cambodia before re-entering Thailand but the border crossing between Lao and Cambodia doesn't seem so smooth.
I don't want difficulties and mild extortion by transport and border officials. I decided to go straight into Cambodia.

I took the overnight bus to Bangkok from Chiang Mai.
Fortunately, I had no one sitting beside me so I got a half decent sleep.
The next morning I went to where the Cambodian Embassy used to be. It had moved to a far off inconvenient location which took me a long time to get to. For an extra $5 that goes into the officials pocket, they'll get your visa right away rather than making you come back in a few days. I'm sure a lot more people are paying this since they moved. Some Cambodian Embassies will sell you a 3 month visa for the right price but it's not valid. Only a 30 day visa is valid.
And to be fair you can get your visa online at http://evisa.mfaic.gov.kh.

In Bangkok, I went to a movie and couldn't understand why there seemed to be a party going on. It was an opening premier movie for one of Thailand's leading actresses. I walked in among the exclusively Thai crowd, was offered food, took a few photos then left.

Cambodia:

Friday at 5:50 am I caught the train from Bangkok's Hualampong Station going to the Cambodian border.
It amazes me how it still costs 48 Baht ($1.60) for the six hour train ride to the border town. On the train I talked to a lady who wanted to practice her English because she had a Danish boyfriend who could only speak Danish. She wasn't on the train long.
Then I had the opportunity to practice my Thai. I asked the girl across from me if she would watch my bags while I went to the bathroom. She nodded. Perfect. My Thai language classes had really paid off...
Nawww! With my poor accented Thai, even if I had said "I'm going out to kill an elephant then eat it. Be right back" I would have gotten the same polite nod. If anything, my hand gestures conveyed the idea.



At the border:

Poi Pet, the border town has so much money pouring into it because of the casinos, yet the main road has the quality of a junkyard's. To get a visa at the border you have to pay the official an extra $5 which goes into his pocket or you can wait around for 2 hours in the blistering heat for the normal pace visa. Try to get a bus out. Transportation is controlled so that buses don't bring people from Poi Pet except once early in the morning. Now you have to take a group taxi of which the foreigner pays the load. Rumour has it that the airlines flying into Siem Reap have discouraged a proper road to the Angkor Wat area. I suspect the taxi-mafia has some input as well.

One reason Cambodia has no infrastructure is that everyone in the government is stealing for themselves. I talked to a Belgium fellow who lives here six months a year growing vegetables on a farm. The workers don't like working he says. Most young men prefer being motorcycle taxis-drivers. His sister-in-law got a job with the government for two years, came home and built a mansion.
In a country where they pay the police $35 a month, government officials make about $1000 per month. More than expats from western countries need to live comfortably.

Even simple health education is not readily available by the government. This Belgium fellow's Khmer family drinks water from the rice fields and consider constant digestive problems as the norm.

Rooms in Battambang are pretty good for the price. As a matter of fact the quality is better for the price than Thailand.
The quality of the roads in the city are the same as they were 10 years ago. Dusty and dirty. Lots of money is building hotels but few have more than a few rooms rented.



BKK Post, Feb 17,2008:
The Kmer Rouge leader who abducted three backpackers from a railway in 1994 (Fr, Br, Aussie) died. Twelve Cambodians were killed and the backpackers were held 3 months then killed during a rescue attempt. About 3 years later I travelled that train and it was strange when the ticket collector ignored myself and another foreigner while they collected fares from the locals. The R.R. wasn't about to condone R.R. travel for foreigners yet.

The celebrations of the New Year may be wet in Thailand but April 16, 2008 a hand grenade was thrown into a crowd dancing at the Siem Reap celebration, killing one person and injuring 27 others.

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