As you may know, my boyfriend Jordan and I signed a three-month lease on an apartment in Siem Reap, Cambodia. We decided to spend a few months in a smaller town while we’re traveling both to slow down for a bit and get our energy back up for backpacking, we’d have a set schedule that would make it easier to work and fund our next few months of travels.
Here’s the thing about Cambodia though, the tourist visa only lasts 30 days. So we needed three of them for our three month stay. The first one we got upon arrival to the country. The second one we extended from within the country. And the third one? Border run turned weekend vacation with some drama.
Visa #1: Arrival (The Easy One)
Getting your visa for Cambodia is a relatively easy process. Since we were flying into the country, we had to complete an E-Arrival card within seven days of arriving, and then after that, you can just apply and pay for your visa when you enter the country.
It’s a $30 visa which, for the most part, you can only pay for with cash. And after that, we were set for the next 30 days. Easy peasy.
Visa #2: Extension from Within Cambodia
For our second month in Cambodia, we extended our visa from within the country. This is probably the easiest and most cost-effective option if you’re planning to stay put.
To extend our visas, we just went to a reputable tour agency that offers visa extension services. There are a bunch of these in Siem Reap—there are literally three within a five-minute walk of our apartment. Luckily, the one closest to our place is one of the highest-rated tour agencies in Siem Reap, so that’s where we went.
The service cost $50, even though the visa itself only costs $30. But when you factor in the transportation costs you’d have to pay to leave the country and re-enter (whether by bus or flight), it’s more than worth it to get it done at one of the tour agencies.
We walked into the office, filled out a form, paid, and just left our passports with them. They say it can take up to two weeks to process the new visa, but we got ours back in less than a week. It was super easy — certainly easier than what we did next.
Visa #3: The Border Run
A few weeks before our second visa expired, we started planning for our third and final visa extension. This time, we decided we’d do a border run to the nearest land border, which actually isn’t that close because it was the Vietnam border on the other side of the country.
It would have been really convenient to do the land border crossing into Thailand, since Siem Reap is pretty close to that border. But right now, Thailand and Cambodia are having a border conflict, so we can’t go that way. So instead, we decided to make the trek all the way to Ho Chi Minh City and turn it into a little weekend vacation.
We booked an overnight sleeper bus, all of our accommodations, and a few activities. We were super pumped to go.
Until the day we were supposed to get on the overnight bus.
The Mistake
Less than 24 hours before our supposed border crossing I realized we had forgotten something pretty big.
We forgot to buy the visas for Vietnam.
I think we overestimated our travel savviness just a bit because this was such an oversight. Normally this wouldn’t be a huge problem because a lot of times you can just apply for a visa on arrival. But Vietnam does not offer visa on arrival for land border crossings.
If I had remembered to check the visa requirements a week before leaving for Vietnam (something that I literally told myself to do and then didn’t), I would have simply applied for the visa on the government website, which would have cost me $25 each.
But because I didn’t check and assumed it would be fine, I was instead panicking and scrolling through travel agencies offering expedited visa services. I needed the visa within five business hours (because mind you, all of this was happening at noon on a Friday), and the prices I was seeing were $200+ per visa.
After finding out that we might have to pay $400 to get into Vietnam, we considered scrapping the whole trip. Everything except our overnight buses was fully refundable, so we could potentially cut our losses.
Obviously, we still needed to get out of the country because not only was our border crossing scheduled for the next day, but our Cambodian visa was also set to expire.
So suddenly, instead of figuring out how to get the Vietnam visa, we were on Google Flights with the date set to “tomorrow” and the destination open, just searching for the cheapest flight out of the country. We almost flew to somewhere that didn’t require a visa like Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur.
But then, after what felt like hours of frantic searching, we found a travel agency that could get our visas processed and delivered to us within five hours for $250 total.
Still way more than the $50 it should have cost us, but a lot better than $400. The plan was back on.
Once we actually had the visas sorted, everything else was a breeze.
We boarded our bus at 10pm that same night. It was a sleeper bus with a bed that Jordan and I shared, and it took us to Phnom Penh. Then at 4am, we transferred to a new (not sleeper) bus that took us across the border and into Ho Chi Minh City.
The border crossing itself was easy. We went with Giant Ibis Bus Company, and they fully handled everything, we just had to give them our proof of visa and our passports. The way back into Cambodia was even easier because Cambodia actually does offer visas on arrival. Again, the bus company handled everything. All we had to do was pay for the visa before boarding the bus.
So which option is better?
Well to be honest both were great options. But there’s certainly one that’s a little bit more fool proof.
The option for getting your visa from a tour agency inside the country is probably the cheaper option. It is a flat rate between $50-$60 to get your visa extended for another month. There’s barely any paperwork to fill out, and it’s so easy if you are planning on staying in the same place for a few weeks so you can pick back up your passport.
The border run had the potential to also be easy, but again I was an idiot and forgot to get my Vietnam visa. If I wouldn’t have forgotten it would have been an easy quick adventure. Whether or not you have to pay an egregious amount for your visa, the border run will be more expensive if you want to make a trip out of it. Because you will have to pay for transportation, accommodation, food, PLUS the $30 visa re-entrance fee for Cambodia, plus pay for whatever other visa you need to leave the country.
I don’t think I had a favorite option, and I’m so glad we did both. I had a wonderful vacation in Vietnam, and I also appreciated the ease of being able to stay put while my visa got extended for me.
My Advice for Future Travelers
Don’t be like me. Know the visa requirements before you go to a country. Double check and triple check. Know if you need to apply for the visa ahead of time, and how far in advance. And always, always, always buy the visa from the official government website if you have the time.
Thanks for reading!
xx abby
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I feel like we applied in advance by 7 days and were still waiting until 24 hours before to get our Vietnam visa. That way isn't foolproof either and gave us anxiety lol. We took the bus from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi also. My partner forgot to keep his yellow slip when we entered Cambodia and when they asked for it to leave we panicked. Solved by a $10 bribe lol. The joy of traveling abroad!
hi! I travelled through some of Southeast Asia this year and I’m curious about your experiences. I travel on a British passport so didn’t have the same requirements going into Vietnam, but was quite surprised at your talk of getting your visas through your agencies, especially leaving your passport with them for a week! did this ever make you anxious?
we sorted out our own visas and didn’t really run into any issues - when we had to extend our Thailand ones it was a bit of a pain logistically due to be sent to different places, but all the forms were manageable. hope you’re loving Siem Reap, I was there for only less than a week but really enjoyed my stay there! ☀️