
“You enter, but car no enter.” – Head of Customs, Cham Yeam border, Cambodia
Border crossing: Had Lek, Thailand – Cham Yeam, Cambodia
09/10/16-12/10/16
Stats:
Days on the road: 184
Kilometres covered: 33,107km
Countries visited: 16
Today’s Special Stats:
Longest border crossing: move over China, there’s a new champion in town!
How many men does it take to let a British Defender into Cambodia? 13
We approached the border at Had Lek with more than a little trepidation, and distinctly soggy feet. It was monsoon weather outside and Caesar’s vent seals were doing their best impersonation of waterfalls. Why trepidation? We’d heard that border officials were becoming strict on some papers for the crossing, namely requesting a Carnet de Passage, despite it not being a legal requirement in Cambodia, and/or a permission from customs in Phnom Penh. Well, we didn’t have either of those – so we were hoping that some smiling, sweet talking, begging and “financial incentives” might help us across.

Splish Splash Caesar’s having a bath!
We arrived at the Thai side (Had Lek) at 1:30pm on the 9th October, and were politely told by the Thai customs and immigration officials that we should check with the Cambodian officials as to whether they would let us in, before Thailand would let us out. Ok, that’s worrying. They told us we were free to pass into the Cambodian border area without stamping us and Caesar out, just in case it was bad news.
We passed through, and met a nice official who gave us some tissue to dry our glasses and who looked over our V5C (UK car registration document) before he asked us whether we had a carnet or a permission from Phnom Penh. “No, sir, this is news to us – can’t we just pay for a customs document here and now pretty please?” “No sir, no madam, car no enter.” Bugger. This wasn’t a great start. We then met his boss, and his boss’ boss, who all genuinely tried to help us, but could not let us pass.
It was quickly becoming clear that they were on strict instruction from Phnom Penh not to let anyone through without a carnet or permission. One or other is sufficient, but with neither we were stuck. “Sorry sir, madam, you enter but car no enter.” It took 4 hours to discuss his, and eventually they called our embassy for us, but had no luck as it was a Sunday, and then called a travel agent to see if they could help to arrange a permission but he was away. One of the officials eventually told us that the travel agent is a very expensive option, whereas doing it yourself (he said) was free. This would require us to go to Phnom Penh, some 4 hours drive by taxi, or wait until the morning for a bus that would take up to 10 hours, albeit a fraction of the cost.
At this stage we were facing a big predicament. If the permission and our trip to Phnom Penh took more than 3 days, we would overstay our Thai customs document for the car and jeopardise our return journey into Thailand to ship Caesar home. I did my best sad face and explained that by denying us entry to Cambodia, they were effectively forcing us to overstay our vehicle, which as they well know is illegal. It would also force us to have to buy a new Thai visa and then a subsequent Cambodian visa when we eventually did return with permission (assuming we get it!) so we could fetch Caesar and return to Cambodia with him, which would be pricy for us. They eventually agreed to let us check out of Thailand and enter Cambodia, parking Caesar just within the border, which we were really thankful for!
After checking out of Thailand (paying 25 baht fee for… something…), we got our Cambodian visas there, costing $37USD each and taking a whole 1 minute to process. Note – in Cambodia tourists pay dollars and may get dollars or Cambodian Riels in change. ATMs only give out dollars. We found a taxi driver with the help of the customs boss, and paid a pretty penny ($70!) to get to Phnom Penh. By now it was 6pm and the expected 4 hour journey turned into 6 hours… On the way our taxi driver (who spoke not a single word of English) stopped 5 times, nearly killed two dogs and a scooter rider, and got lost in Phnom Penh and spent 30 minutes discussing directions with the local police and Will in the street. This was all whilst either drenching us by having the windows open in the rain, or freezing us to death with the aircon on low. Great! Well worth the money! Finally we arrived at a hostel at midnight and checked in, glad to get some rest.
In the morning we went to the British Embassy, as we had been told by the border guys that they could prepare a letter for customs for us. The British Embassy is at No. 27-29, Street 75. We arrived and were greeted by a lovely English lady called Christine. It was terribly fitting that it was raining and they had a Land Rover and a photo of the Queen – excellent, where is my cup of tea and scone? Sadly, Christine wasn’t able to help us – she knew nothing of the permission we needed and couldn’t get hold of the Ministry of Customs and Excise. She told us to go to the Customs office and see what they needed, and come back with more information if we needed our embassy’s support.
So off to Customs we went. Address: No. 6-8, Norodom Boulevard (street 41), Phnom Penh. By now it was 10am, and we were eventually directed around the back of the main building (round to the left) and up three flights of stairs to the first door on the left. I couldn’t tell you which department this is, but the lady there simply asked us whether our car is left or right hand drive, asking if we had our request letter, and then told us to come back at 2pm to meet her manager. We said we could write a letter and come back at 2pm. We bided our time in a local café, writing the letter requesting our admittance for Caesar, and getting our documents ready to show the customs guys. We were now pretty worried as to whether being right hand drive would be a problem… And then read that right hand drive vehicles are illegal in Cambodia. Hopefully being only on a temporary import would mean this wasn’t an issue. We sat and brewed and worried for 4 hours, before returning to the customs office.
Upon our return we met a really friendly customs boss, who explained we must first go to the Ministry of Tourism to ask them to approve our letter… We asked him to show us where it was on the map, and he said it was near the Olympic stadium. Woohoo – my time to shine, time to be a relationship builder – I don’t work in sales for nothing you know! I asked him when Cambodia hosted the Olympics, and told him about how proud Britain was to host the Olympics in 2012. By the end he was smiling and happy, we made a good impression which we hope will play in our favour when he comes to sign our letter later.
Well, at least it had stopped raining by now!
Next stop, the Ministry of Tourism, address: 3a, street 169, Phnom Penh. We were welcomed by two of the sweetest Cambodian girls who checked us in and showed us to the “permission admin man”, Kiron. He helped us to tailor our request letter better, including:
– our information – passport numbers and expiration, nationality
– car registration info – reg plate, chassis number, country of registration
– itinerary for Cambodia
– dates of stay for the car
– border entry/exit points
– purpose of visit
– Caesar being right hand drive
– our contact details (try to get a Cambodian SIM card to make this easy
He then took copies of:
– V5C (car registration document)
– passports
– Cambodian visas
– international drivers permits
– and printed our letter and a photo of Caesar.
Will then had to sign the letter (as the owner of the vehicle), and Kiron filled out two forms in Khmer, summarising the purpose and duration of our visit.
We had read that technically you need a Cambodian license to drive here, but Kiron felt the IDP would be sufficient. We asked Kiron why this paperwork was being enforced now. He said that in the last 2 months he had received many more requests than normal. He believed it was because the borders and government were getting stricter because foreigners were leaving their cars in Cambodia more and more often. This is a big trouble for Cambodia, and so they needed to control overlanders more closely. He didn’t know why they were requesting the Carnet, but the permissions were becoming commonplace.
The next step would be for Kiron to submit our application to the Minister for Tourism. He couldn’t tell us how long it would take for the Minister to assess and approve / reject our request, so he said he would call and email once it was ready. The waiting game began…
In all of this palaver so far, there are some simple but important points we have picked up from locals and one American gent in the café where we wrote our letter. Some may be obvious, but we hope it helps:
– be ridiculously polite at the border and at the different ministries. Because of other overlanders leaving their cars behind, some officials feel we have a bad reputation. We found that if you ‘wai’ the officials, they are kinder and more helpful.
– using a travel agent may be a more expensive option but we understand that would mean that you wouldn’t have to lose time going to Phnom Penh first if you use an agent before arrival.
We spent the evening fretting over whether being RHD would be a showstopper, and trying to convince ourselves it would be OK or we would have been rejected there and then.
In the morning we decided to rent a tuk tuk driver for the day to take us around. We didn’t know if we’d hear from the Ministry so we figured this way we’d have a fixed price for any driving around in circles we might have to do. Our tuk tuk driver’s name was either Pizza or Pisshead, we weren’t sure but, with a name like that, what’s not to like! Our first stop was S21 (Tuol Sleng museum) which we’ll write a separate blog about, to make this one as simple as possible.
Just after we left S21 and began driving to the Killing Fields, Will got a call from no less than the Minister for Tourism himself, saying he wanted to meet us. So our lovely tuk tuk driver took us to the Ministry instead – obviously not quickly enough as the Minister actually rang Will back demanding we hurry up as it was lunchtime and he was hungry!
The Minister was in the same building as Kiron, on floor 3, room 301. He went through some basic questions about our car and journey before signing off our request. He then sent us along to the Customs office again.
Pizza took us for lunch (I had fried rice in a pineapple – pure genius!) and then we went to customs for 2pm when we knew they would be back from their lunch. The same man we met the day before greeted us, took our papers and said to return at 5pm when his boss would be out of his meeting and they could sign off everything.
After an afternoon at the killing fields, Pizza returned us to customs at a Britishly early 4:45pm. This was apparently an hour early in fact, and we waited until 5:40pm for the first man to sign it and get his boss to sign it, before being sent upstairs for Mr Sun to sign it too! He had lots of very important looking stamps.
We finally escaped just before 6pm and asked Pizza about buses back to the border. He took us to ask our hostel, who were frankly unhelpful, and could only offer tickets for $21 each and not leaving until the next day, meaning we also had to pay for their hostel again and waste a day travelling back in a slow bus. Pizza saved the day and called his taxi friend who came to meet us and offered $90 which we whittled down to $80. Ok, not cheap but it bought us an extra day, and meant we could camp in Caesar and be ready to cross first thing.
We thanked Pizza for all his help and gave him a big tip for being amazing all day! It’s amazing that even with just a little bit of common language you can really connect with people. We jumped in the taxi, had a snooze and weren’t frozen to death, and arrived safely back at Caesar at midnight. We set up the tent (sodden since there’s definitely a hole in the cover… glad we stored the mattress in the boot while we were away… and got some shut eye.
In the morning we were awoken at 5:45am by the sound of a very busy border! The market sellers were pulling their carts from one country to the other, saying hello to us and marvelling as we put away the tent – it’s like magic to most people!

Brekkie just inside Cambodia
We headed to the customs hut by 6:40am and the junior man checked over our papers and sent us a ‘1km walk’ to the border customs office where we needed to get a customs import paper. He said the staff would be ready by 7:30am, which gave us plenty of time to walk over. Well, 1km was in fact 2km, but there was no rush as the admin guy didn’t arrive until 8:30am and then he took an hour and a half to fill it out. Then we waited half an hour for the senior to arrive and then even longer to stamp and sign it, and a further half an hour for the accountant to process it. The customs paper cost $15 but since we didn’t have change they let us pay just $10. By 11:15am, we were finally able to go back to the border!
By that stage we were glad not to have chosen to take a bus as we would never have been able to process all of this customs paperwork in the late evening.
The guys back at the border gave the documents a quick once over and let us pass – wishing us well! We can’t quite believe how long it took, but by 11:30am, 70 hours after first arriving at the border, Caesar was free to go!

We’re in!