Border Post | Customs and Immigration

Laos -> Cambodia
On Laos side we looked at the border guards as if water was burning when they first ask 10 whatever currency at customs, and then 2 usd for the stamp. When they knew we knew we got the “special stamp” which was free. Just make sure you are the last one of the group (if there is one).

Cambodia side print the document for customs (check my checkin at a nearby hotel) to show you come prepared. They ask 38 usd for visa, let your girlfriend play badcop walking outside pretending to call the embassy. Play goodcop “listen if the embassy tells us it’s 38 we pay 38 otherwise it’s 30” and you get it for 30.

I also think there is an evisa now for 30 usd+6usd processing cost but we just wanted to play the game with the border guards.

Took us 1.5 hours, if you decide to pay all the “extra” costs shouldn’t take more than 30mins.

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A T T E N T I O N : If you filled out the car importation form and failed to print it, they will save your password when logging into yourr e commerce account!! choose a pw you dont use for other logins.

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Laos → Cambodia

Leaving Laos they wouldn’t stamp my passport until I completed the online vehicle temp import (https://apps.customs.gov.kh/register) on the Cambodian side. When done came back to passport control on Laos side. They ask $2 for stamp, if you wait long enough they will stamp it for free.

Entering Cambodia they printed out my vehicle import for an alleged $10. If you wait long enough they’ll give it to you free. Next is visa, that is claimed to be $38 and if you wait long enough it becomes $35 and if you wait even longer once everybody leaves it’s actually $30. All in all probably took 1 hour to save paying $20 bribes.

Come with time and patience, nobody is rude but you have to be prepared to act stupid and play the waiting game.

Come

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From Laos to Cambodia. I did the registration on the website (link in one of the other comments) for the car beforehand. You no longer need a Cambodian phonenumber. They printet it out for me with no costs and asked for my exitborder.

Visa they asked 38 USD, I said no, as it is 30, but they said the 8 USD is for the stamp which is BS. I was in a hurry so they got 35 USD. I could see on the face of the guy that I knew it was BS so he was quite embarrassed. Anyway, no payment for other stamps, nor the TIP.

Friendly enough on both sides. Don’t forget to get your Carnet stamped out on the Laos side if you entered Laos on a.Carnet which I did.

INSURANCE:

For third party liability insurance see my post in Siam Reap, near the National Museum. Nobody was able to tell where to buy one but I found one by e-mailing various brokers. Their office is NOT in Siam Reap, everything can be done by e-mail, also prior to entry to Cambodia. As I understand third party insurance is mandatory in Cambodia, and they can impound your car if you have an accident without insurance, at least till the matter is settled.

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Exiting Cambodia -> Entering Laos. Wow.
Firstly, Cambodia was pretty easy but terrible. I arrived and luckily there were 3 other foreigners there. I had my phone out with the camera pulled up. The immigration tried to forcibly grab by phone and had hold of it till i started saying “What are you doing! Stop grabbing my phone!!” I’m Khmer he told the guard “Camera audio. No charge”. So i exited.
Laos.. what a terrible experience. Visa on arrival, all went smooth. At “Arrival” he takes my picture, and says “Okay, $2”. I say, “No. what for!?” He says “Stamp”. I told him I’m not paying nor do i have any money on me. I just paid all my money for arrival. He just says “Oh, sorry.” I ask for my passport and he denies it. I told him i have no money and he’s holding my passport hostage. He just repeats “oh, sorry.” So i walk away and say I’m calling the US Embassy which typically works at borders.) I then tell him I’m not paying for his corruption and he gets really upset. Starts yelling that i disrespected him and I’m in Laos, I’m rude and mean.. blah blah blah. and he says, okay go. Luckily, the French couple was right behind me and also refused to paid.

The guard the walks out, goes for a smoke. He came back in, sat on his phone and then a senior guard appeared to come in, stamp our passports and started to hand them over till the same guard says “no.” He calls us up and yells at the girl for taking his photo and video. Yells at me for being so disrespectful and mean. How i must have better manners and so on. Takes a photo of my passport and then “deletes it” and refused to explain why to me. We ended up walking away without paying. 45min wait. Stop paying these people.

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Still have to pay $2/person to get stamped on both sides.

Exiting Laos was straight forward and quite immediately done.

Entering Cambodia with our own car was difficult. You are supposed to ask for a temporary import document online first (customs.gov.kh) but it asks for a local phone number to get an account.

If you don’t do it beforehand, like us, the officer can let you use his mobile phone to get the access to the customs site. In our case though, the website wasn’t working properly… we have waited two hours until it works again.
Then we have been issued the TIP and stamped the VISA.

Everyone was kind tough.

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The exit process from Cambodia was straightforward and required no fees. The only requirements were obtaining the immigration exit stamp and processing the necessary paperwork for the bikes. It is important to retain this document as it will be required upon entry into Laos. The entire process took approximately 20 minutes.

Entering Laos was also straightforward, with a "visa on arrival" being issued after completion of the entry form, payment of a $40 fee, and providing a passport photo (available for $2). An additional fee of $2 was requested for weekend stamping, which we said no to but eventually paid after the passport validity of less than 6 month was brought to attention. The process of obtaining bike entry permits was straightforward, costing $3.50 each.

Insurance was purchased before departure and cost 110,000 local currency for one month of coverage per motorbike. Currency exchange was convenient at the border and offered a favorable exchange rate. The entire process on the Laos side took approximately 90 minutes.

In conclusion, the border crossing experience was quick and easy.

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Laos to Cambodia, 2 motorbikes

Laos Exit
Ride up to the barrier, on the right is the exit stamp counter. They asked for USD2 per person, we point blank refused saying “we are not paying any money” and they gave us our passports back although they weren’t happy about it. They had just successfully received money from a bunch of bus tourists.

Customs is just the counter in the lane, they recognised the Carnets de Passage which we’ve been using (probably wrongly) as a proxy for a temporary import document but it worked.

Cambodia entry
First we stopped at the counter in the lane where our Covid vaccinations were checked. The official asked for 20,000 Kip, we simply said we weren’t paying and walked away, he thought it was funny.

Visa office - here, they manage the flow of people in a way to best extort each group. We were therefore sent to Customs and told to get our TIP first but then they called us back over to get our visas. The tourists in front of us were charged USD35 per visa and then USD4 per stamp.
We were busy filling in the online TIP form (more on this follows) so when they asked us for this amount we said that we were paying USD 30 per visa and that’s all. We were handed over to the boss who made a show of getting annoyed, tried to claim there’s a different price for on-arrival visas. We stood firm and as we were holding up the queue, he eventually relented. He was very annoyed when we hung around to continue filling in our forms because we were in the way of them getting USD200 off two Buddhist monks (turns out there’s also a special visa for them!). If this doesn’t motivate you to refuse to pay bribes…

Customs - in a small office to the side, they asked us for USD 30 per bike. This is not true, the TIP is free. Another official arrived and asked for USD 40 per bike. They explained that if we could fill in the TIP form online by ourselves, it would be free. We said no problem and they asked if we realised we would need to create an account on the Customs website. It turns out you need to register with an email and then receive a One Time Password to a phone number that has to be Cambodian - we tried with Laos and UK and had no luck. Only when we explained we were not going to pay them for the TIP did they relent and give us one of their phone numbers and the OTP. We then filled in the forms online, they had access to them to check through the online system once we submitted them, and they laughed at where we had made mistakes, but we were able to correct them and resubmit the forms. You need to know the code for the entry and the exit points. This office is STG12.

The form is here: https://www.customs.gov.kh/en
Under eServices, temporary import.
You must have a Cambodian phone number to access it.

They still tried to ask us for money to print the forms but by then we were joking with them and they simply let us have them.

Chances are, the next traveller will be lucky and they will just fill the forms in for free, just know that there is a way around it if you’re prepared to fill the form in yourself and you have a friend with a Cambodian phone number. If you are happy to pay a small fee, say USD10 per vehicule, you’ll probably save yourself some hassle.

The last check is the passport check at the barrier. The official there asked for ‘coffee money’, we just laughed and said that the other officials had cleaned us out.

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We traveled from Cambodia to Laos. Cambodia side took 40 minutes, Laos 1 hour. We paid USD 3 for the vehicle exit document in Cambodia (they asked 20), USD 10 for the vehicle entry document (with receipts), USD 40 per person for the Laos visas and USD 3 (mainly leftover KMR) for the entry stamps (they asked 4).

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Leaving Laos: We crossed the border during the week at 9 a.m. We waited 45 min to get our Laos exit stamp. We parked our bikes in front of the counter and refused to pay several times and waited patiently. The blue sign explaining that you have to pay 2 dollars is wrong .... it's corruption. We paid nothing to get our stamp!

Entered Cambodia: We waited 15 min and paid 30 dollars refusing to pay more.

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My explication is for the entrance to Cambodia 😉

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Dont forget that visa's fee is 30$/pers not 35$!! And if you are travelling with your car like us you don't have to pay for the TIP it is free ! And the stamp in the passport is free too. No corruption ! With patience you manage to do it...​

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Border between Laos and Cambodia

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