Adventures in Thailand: Lunch in Cambodia

Hello All,

Sorry it has been a few days since my last post but we have been incredibly busy. You should find 3 posts that I just added. Enjoy!

Sunday

To sum up our day, we went to Cambodia for lunch.

This morning we went to the On Nut BTS station to meet our driver for our visa run. After waiting for over half an hour, I asked another farang if he was waiting for the same thing. Thankfully he was, and has also done visa runs with this company before so he told us it is not too unusual.

Before I go on, I’d like to tell you about this Farang. He was probably in his 60s and claims to have traveled all around Asia. Having been born and raised in Australia, his accent was hard to overcome at times and it was difficult to make out what he was saying. Anyways, you may be thinking…hey they finally met an Australian…
Well he was everything we avoid. Having talked about spending numerous vacations at Pattaya, and knowing the area there so well, including what developments are up and coming, as well as talking about several of his “lady friends” I have come to conclude that Mr. Aussie is one of those men who come to Asian countries for the women, rather than the country itself. I’d be lying if I said I did not have anything against that. Even though he was very helpful throughout the day, I could not wait until we parted our own ways. Misty and I split the time we would have to sit by him on the van as he basically sat half on your seat as well (He spoke of how some kids called him ‘Fat Grampa’ – well suited I think). He made for a long day.

Anyways, back to my story. After waiting over an hour for our ride, we decided to call the company and see what happened. I guess they no longer met upstairs where we were told to wait, but now wait downstairs in the parking lot. So the run already left for the day. After a little persuasion, the owner came back and hired another van to take the rest of us who were waiting. We left two hours behind schedule.

The ride there was very long. We made a stop about 2.5 hrs into it, and then reached Cambodia in about 4 hours. I was happy to see some Holsteins grazing in the ditch along side of the road. The first Holsteins I have seen in months. The van dropped us off at the departures area and let us go off on our own. Thankfully the Aussie was an experienced veteran with visa runs and he showed us what to do. We each went up to a counter and showed our passport where we were stamped out of the country. Next we went to another table where we handed over our passports to wait for our visa to be processed. Since we went with a well known company they were handled privately and quickly. While we waited we crossed over to Cambodia, and had lunch at the casino. When I walked into the casino I was expecting something like Halifax but soon discovered it looks like an old hall with tables. Lunch was okay, but quite pricey.

After lunch one of the workers met us at the casino and told us our passports were ready. had to fill out a departures and arrival card and then we had to physically leave Cambodia again and enter Thailand where we had to get both an exit and an entrance stamp. Finally back to the van we go for the long ride back to Bangkok. The whole process at the border took about an hour and a half. We would have been able to pass through much quicker, expect one of the Philippines we had with us had some trouble getting back into Thailand.

We arrived back in Bangkok in the early evening, with passport and new stamp in hand. In total the day took approximately 11 hours. It made for a long day. Hopefully we can plan the rest of our time here okay, so that we do not need to do another visa run. Our new stamp will expire around the middle of June. However, we plan on going to Laos in 2 weekends which will mean that we get another entry stamp on our way back through to Thailand which should take us until the end of June. At this time we will be finished most of our teaching and planned on traveling into Cambodia for a few days, and possibly Vietnam. Getting the stamp to come back into Thailand after will take us till we fly back to Canada, and will also be the last stamp we are granted as we would then have used up all of our entry stamps, meaning we would need to leave the country for 90 days.

Going on a visa run with a company is a bit pricier but I would recommend it, at least for your first time. There were a lot of children begging for money everywhere we went at the border, and they even followed us right to the van and stood by the window. Without a company you may also be hassled into paying for unnecessary guides and services. People will try to rip you off at every opportunity. I don’t know if we will attempt it on our own in the future, even now after knowing what to do.