The visa run
Trip Start
Jun 07, 2004
1
18
50
Trip End
Nov 27, 2004
Bangkok,
Thailand
Monday, August 30, 2004
Living a while in Thailand is reasonably simple but does require us foreigners to jump through a few hoops. Depending on what type of visa is stamped in your passport, you will be required to exit ( or exit and re-enter) after 30, 60 or 90 days. Some visas can be extended, some cannot. Some foreigners can stay for longer periods, for example if they are married or working here, or both. Or simply if they are over 50 years of age and don't mind parking a reasonable sum of money in a Thai bank account. Without getting a penny in interest. I am none of these things. It's my time to exit and re-enter. Cambodia provides the nearest border crossing(s) to Bangkok mostly to facilitate those wishing to remain in Thailand and to furnish the Cambodian officials with a nice little earner. For you'd be crazy to begin a holiday in such places and would certainly chose to fly in if that were the case. For us visa runners, all that is required is for us to walk out of Thailand, turn around and walk back in again. In my case, doing so will entitle me to a new 30 stay in the Kingdom.
The dedicated border-bus completes its round trip in 12 hours, give or take. There are many such buses. And ours doesn't break down which I have known to happen. But the bus does not use the regular border post at Aranyaprathet / Poipet. It chooses another crossing hitherto unknown . The imagery is no different - decrepit border town straddling a brown trickle of a river in which semi-naked urchins play with assorted filth and debris. The distinguishing feature is the ' tea money '. A fee levied by the corrupt Khymer officials on the Cambodian side. Though completely off the record, they will generally take 100 baht from each individual and stick it in their pocket. But because we have been unlucky enough to finish up at a different frontier, here they ask for 500 baht.
Don't forget , this is on top of the 20 US dollars we have already paid for a ' Cambodian visa ' which we neither want nor will be using. It wastes an entire page in my passport. Instinctively, I question the 400 percent increase in tea money and the greasy Khymer bureaucrat smiles as he hands me back my passport, with no exit stamp. His garbled explanation is ; Stay here then if you like. If you want to go back into Thailand across my border, its 500 Baht. Take it or leave it chum.
Back on the Thai side of the border I wait for a bus to leave. Fitfully reading my book as I sit in the shade alone. Hardly able to digest the words on the page I am so consumed with rage. Cursing these Khymer bastards under my breath. I really am mystified as to why Thailand lets all this hard currency walk out of it's doors. I mean, Thailand doesn't even like Cambodia.
Next ; Koh Pha Ngan by bus
