Passing land border from Cambodia to Thailand

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Many people travel without any clear plan where to go or what to do next, especially when they travel by land. Things change many times and very quickly depending who you meet, weather, accessibility, events or festivals. It happened several times with me so don't need to take for granted that you will follow your initial plan.

Visa requirements

[1]Because Thailand require visa and visa on arrival for many countries you have to be prepared to provide additional documents for approval of entry visa. For my Romanian passport it was necessary documents as address of your accommodation place, amount of cash money required by the law and an exit ticket from the country. I often book a place to stay while riding the bus or train into that direction without any clear plan what I will do next, so to provide such detailed information is annoying for many people, especially when you don’t know by yourself.
I use booking.com to book a random accommodation and I use those places with free cancellation. How silly it could sound but is true, I don’t fly but I book flight tickets only to show that I have an exit ticket from country. For the same reason I book flight tickets on app “GoMosafer Travel” because they don’t charge you when you book the flights. You will need to have your confirmation of the booking printed on the paper because it will be attached together with your visa application form. I didn’t print the confirmation on the paper and staff kindly let me print the flight reservation on their computer. When I arrived in Bangkok, I met a guy who came from Malaysia by train, I think he was from Spain, he told me that no one at the border asked him for exit ticket so for sure this rule is flexible for other border points or passports. At the Cambodian/Thailand border Krong Poi Pet they didn’t ask me to show the amount of cash I have with me. For sure I didn’t have enough to reach the requirement by the law and I wrote in application exactly how much I had, about 200$.

[2]
All this additional information with flight ticket and accommodation feels like a waste of time and money for the administrating of the borders and the staff. Why need to provide these details? The staff from the border was assuring me that these details are necessary to guarantee that I am only tourist and I will not overstay my visa. They probably also know that with some clicks you can fulfill this requirement and make no sense with all that paperwork they do. Is that because the staff have more headache to handle the overstays process? Possibly, but in this case they can avoid one at least.  If you don’t have to spend the time for entry visa you will have more time for processing the procedure of those who overstay their visa instead of spending time for both, entry visa and overstay visa. Seems the overstay in Thailand is a big issue so why not just extend the stay from 15 or 30 days to 60 or 90 days as many places in the region such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore or the Philippines?
According to immigration police by 10th of October 2018 were more than 40,000 foreigners in Thailand whose visas have already expired[1] and it’s very clear why the authorities are concerned, therefore this additional requirements for entry visa, to try to exclude some of them.

No plan is the best plan

[3]

For romanian passport you can get 15 days. Not enough to explore and enjoy the time in Thailand especially when I took the night bus from Phuket to Pattani. After roughly one week, visiting Bangkok and Phuket I was thinking to go to south to explore less touristic places such as Pattani.

[4]
Short after the bus departed from Phuket I fell asleep. I woke up in the morning, the bus was still driving so I checked the map where I am. To my morning surprise I discovered that we passed the place Pattani and now the bus is heading to Malaysia.
I thought the last destination of the bus was Pattani but it wasn’t. Well, I didn’t book any accommodation in Pattani neither have any plan what should I do there so I just let it go and get to Malaysia directly. So no plan is the best plan :)



Terengganu, Malaysia | July 29, 2019


Source

Pictures and photos

[1]. Photo by me, Bangkok 16.07.2019
[2]. https://www.thaiembassy.com/thailand/overstay-visa-thailand.php - The Consequences of Overstaying in Thailand
[3]. Photo by me, Big Buddha view, Phuket 21.07.2019
[4]. Photo by a friend, Phuket 21.07.2019

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