I love Cambodia! It’s absolutely no secret that Cambodia is near and dear to my heart as one of my favourite places in the world. I love volunteering here, I love the beautiful Cambodian smiles… but I resent the Poi Pet border crossing. It’s just tiresome and difficult, so if you can fly – take that option… but if not, be prepared for what you’re in for.
I booked a bargain 250 baht bus from just around the corner from Khao San. They offered me a VIP combo visa pass, which included transport and the Cambodian visa for a cool 1,500 baht. As someone who’s been to Cambodia three times before, I knew this was a scam (1) and politely declined.
The bus was due to pick us up at 7.30am, but didn’t arrive until 8.30am which is somewhat standard in Asia. We headed to the border and arrived near by sometime around 12:30pm (after a royally flat tyre), at this point everyone sat down. People were confused, was this the border? It looked more like a travel agent piggy-backing on the side of a restaurant. My friend and I were discussing how we had been to Cambodia before and I mentioned I was heading to my village in Takeo. At this point, one of the travel agents came up to us and asked us if we’d been to Cambodia before and we were led outside onto the street and pointed towards the border, which we walked to.
Along the way we noticed there was a handmade, and written, sign saying “Cambodian Visa Here”. My friend and I laughed it off, because it was on blue card and was obviously a scam (2). We wondered how many people fell for it, but hoped it wasn’t many. We kept walking towards the border, where I paid my Thai overstayed fine (500 baht a day) and was stamped through. Then we made our way to the Cambodian border – THE ONLY PLACE YOU SHOULD PAY FOR A CAMBODIAN VISA – and filled in our forms while handing over a crisp $20 USD note.
The Cambodian border police tried to ask for $5 or 100 baht “express” fee, which is another scam (3) and then insisted I pay another 100 baht for not having a passport photo with me – which was never a problem the three other times I passed the borders, so that’s another scam (4) as it simply goes in their pocket. I ended up paying for the lack of photo, but not the express service.
Across the border we met up with some people from our group and the people at the stop just before the border had tried to charge them $40 for 1200 baht for the Cambodian visa – double the actual cost of it, which is another scam (5). Many people had paid this, simply thinking it was the only option only to find out on the other side that they were ripped off.
So there’s corruption on both the Thai and the Cambodian side, but there’s no problem going the opposite way on this border crossing because there are no fees for the majority of those entering Thailand. All in all, we arrived in Siem Reap around 8.30pm, meaning this entire trip took a whopping 13 hours and it was not comfortable or fun.
Once on the bus, a Cambodian “volunteer” for the government got on board and was openly discussing the border scams. Unfortunately nobody mentions it to you beforehand, because there are at least 5 different routes people are trying to scam you.
Notes for taking this crossing:
Use USD, if you pay in Baht you’ll be paying 200 baht or around ($7) more
Only pay for your Cambodian visa on the Cambodian side, once you’ve walked through the Thai border
Only pay $20USD for the visa
Bring a passport photo, or you will be asked to pay $5 or 100 baht (I have gotten out of this before, but they seem firmer now)
Be prepared to wait for a really long time in queues and to be ushered off by yourself if you refused to pay more for your visa
Anyone else had any experiences crossing this border? It’s not the most fun and I’m really sad it sets such a bad introduction into such a wonderful country.
I had a similar experience, though I just left from the bus station in Bangkok vs. booking through Khao San Road. The local bus drops you far enough away from the border that you need to take a tuk-tuk, and our tuk-tuk driver took us to the fake border. When we refused to get out, she finally took us a little further to the real location to get stamped out of Thailand. It was a really long, inefficient day, though it could have been much worse. Later, I heard stories from people who fell for the visa scam.
Looks like we got scammed to.arrived at the border by car.we had to park the car and was met by a man who walked us to some outside tables.then charged us 1,200 baht another guy took our passports,while he filled out the forms for us took about 20 minutes.then walked us through to the Cambodian side where we had to wait again on an office while they took our passports again.on the plus side the Cambodian guards gave us free beer while we waited.
I was lucky enough to already have my visa sorted the first time I went through Cambodia/Thailand border, and I was part of an Intrepid Tour at the time, so they organised everything through bags and all we had to do was walk up to the counters.
I did have one person at Thai immigration just walk off in the middle of processing my passport, so that was a bit daunting at first. I did manage to get through alright.
But I could easily tell how crazy and unorganised it was there, and could see some of the scammers around.
Ahh this sounds scary and annoying. My partner and I’ll will be visiting SE Asia next year so I’ll have to remember all of this
I’ve written a whole post about Poipet myself. With the fake border guards, fake fees, fake visa offices and the transport mafia on the Cambodian side, the border crossing there is so ridiculous that it’s actually hilarious. But only if you’re aware of all the scams. I was so happy I read up on it before going. That probably saved me quite a bit of money.
I haven’t been through the poipet border but I recently passed through the Laos – Cambodia border and overcharging was rife. They are charging 2 dollar extra on either side just to stamp your passport in and out. They also become very aggressive if you decline. Something really needs to be done to stop them doing this.