It costs $5 to
sneak into Thailand

In general, getting from country to country, especially once in Asia, was quite easy. There were a few hiccups to be sure (most notably my Vietnam mixup), and getting from Cambodia to Thailand was one of these moments. 

I woke up early to take the 8.5 bus ride from Siem Reap, Cambodia to Bangkok, Thailand. The bus ride was uneventful until arriving at the border. The bus driver asked everyone to take out their Cambodian visa.

Like most countries I visited, I applied for an E-visa ahead of my stay in Cambodia. When I arrived in Cambodia, I showed the man my e-visa on my phone as I didn’t think to print it out (I didn’t see anywhere that instructed me to do so). He grumbled something I couldn’t understand, printed out a piece of paper, stamped it, and let me through. Apparently, the paper he printed out and stamped was my visa, I needed this paper to leave the country. I didn’t know this, didn’t have it, and was told I needed this paper & stamp in order to leave Cambodia. 

I felt a bit less silly when I found out the Canadian man in the seat in front of me lost his as well. The bus driver gave us both a lecture (as if I frequently bus back and forth between Siem Reap and Bangkok) and said he would see what he could do. Everyone else filed off the bus to go through customs as I sat tensely, hoping I wouldn’t be booted from the bus.

The Canadian and I started chatting. He said he really didn’t know where his visa could have gone. I said if it made him feel better, I never had a hard copy to begin with. He asked if I was Canadian. I said I wasn’t, but I thanked him for the compliment.

The bus driver returned and spent ten minutes explaining in a very roundabout way (and without explicitly saying it) that he could get us across by bribing the border guards with five dollars USD. I thought that was a bargain, and as luck would have it, I had a five-dollar bill on me. We handed over our respective passports.

The bus driver proceeded to close all the curtains on the bus and instructed us to “hide” so we couldn’t be seen in the windows. He then drove to the pickup point on the other side of the border. 

If I wasn’t so tired from the bus ride, I would have been a little more panicked about the fact that I was almost definitely being smuggled into another country.

The driver came back onto the bus and handed back our passports with our stamps inside. If I could, I would pay five dollars every time to not have to wait in another visa line.

We picked up the other passengers and continued on our merry way.

My troubles weren’t over, it would seem. We arrived in Bangkok, although instead of dropping us off at a bus terminal, the bus stopped in a shady lot beneath an underpass and told everyone to get off. Most of the bus patrons were native to either Cambodia or Thailand and seemed to expect this. There was a group of 8 of us who were foreign travelers with no idea of where to go. 

My lesson was clear – in the future, I would fly instead. 

Another American woman and I decided to head towards what looked like a train terminal a few blocks over to see if we could find somewhere to get wifi/phone service or call a cab. We tried to chat with a worker, but he spoke little English, and I knew virtually no Thai. I had taken to learning a few chosen words in each language, but other than ‘excuse me’ and ‘thank you’, the other words I knew – bathroom, water, beer, and train – didn’t do me a lot of good here. 

I was renting a room in an apartment, not a hostel, and figured getting directions to where I was staying would be difficult. I opted to use universal language instead. 

“SIM card?” I asked, pointing to my phone. The man smiled and shook his head apologetically. 

My Cambodian SIM card didn’t work across the border, and I found that while I could use my Verizon SIM card for $10/day, it didn’t work well anywhere outside of the US. 

We continued walking until I found a 7-Eleven that sold SIM cards. I tried to buy one, but they didn’t have the correct one for my phone. They did, however, have terrible Wifi, and I was able to keep connected long enough to book a cab to my lodging. I said goodbye to my new American friend. She was staying at a Mad Monkey hostel, a sister hostel of the one I stayed at in Phnom Penh, and I took that to mean we probably had very different travel plans and wouldn’t be meeting up again. 

The rest of my stay in Bangkok was uneventful. I took advantage of the cheap-priced goods at Khaosan Road and bought a larger, proper backpack. I was only there for 2 nights, and that was plenty for me to decide the city wasn’t my style. Khaosan Road is an overwhelming tourist destination, I visited the ‘gay nightlife’ area but wasn’t admitted into a Cabaret show because I was a woman (which was very unexpected), and I accidentally wandered into the red light district which proved to be disturbing and depressing, with lots of old, white western men fawning over young (in some cases, too young) Thai women. 

I eventually made my way to a dive bar with an older bartender who saved me the trouble of fumbling an order in broken Thai and handed me a beer. I spent the rest of the night there, thankful for a break from the rest of the chaos of Bangkok. I met a couple of American ex-pats, surprised to find a tourist in this dingy little bar. I said farewell and headed back to my room to book my flight to Chiang Mai. I needed a break from buses.

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