Welcome to Cambodia…an unusual border crossing
Sunday, April 9th, 2006From southern Laos to Stung Treng, Cambodia, it is possible to cross the border (and despite all of the published information, it is possible to get a Cambodian visa.) We actually got our Cambodian visa in Vientiane, so we were well-prepared. We booked transport from Don Det (the island where we were staying) to Kratie, a town in the north of Cambodia, about 4 hours from the border. Our day began early, we took a longtail boat at 7:30AM to the mainland where we changed to a sangathew that would take us to the Laos border post. The road to the border post was in quite bad shape and we drove a bumpy 5-6km through the woods before reaching it; by the time we got there we were covered in a thick orange dust. Getting stamped out of Laos was easy (it just required an additional unofficial $2.) From the makeshift building, we walked about 10 minutes down the road to another makeshift building, the Cambodian border post. Once again another $2 facilitated our Cambodian stamps. After we were finished with Cambodian immigration, we were herded into a restaurant/tour office, where a guy put out a Cambodian map on the table. We looked at each other suspiciously, what were we waiting for? The guy then tried unsuccessfully to sell us bus tickets to other places in the country. We had our tickets to Kratie, just take us there, we thought. After about 30 minutes of arguing, a minivan arrived and drove us to Cambodia. This required returning on the same 5km dirt road we had arrived from earlier. Once we reached the main road, we turned south (thankfully) and crossed another Cambodian checkpoint. It was here that one of the guys in our van, got his visa to enter Cambodia. From there we drove to Stung Treng, the town closest to the border, where we had to cross another river by boat. When we arrived in Stung Treng, we were taken to a restaurant to wait for our connection to Kratie. We grabbed lunch and waited for the bus. What actually arrived was a Toyota Camry. Wow, we thought, taxi service, we were going to ride in style with the Irish couple also waiting to go to Kratie. Little did we know, that we 4 would be in the backseat, while 4 others would be in the front. Yes, two in the passenger seat and two in the driver’s seat. After 2 1/2 hours on a road under heavy construction, we finally arrived in Kratie. Exhausted after another long day of transport, but excited to be in a new country.
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