At the end of our month in Vietnam, we travelled on to our next country via a land crossing and arrived into Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Border crossings can be a little stressful, so here’s a full run down of what to expect if you’ve not experienced one before. 

As it was our first land crossing like this, we were a little unsure of the process and although we had our e-visa’s approved in advance, we were a little unsure if it would be a simple process or not. Thankfully, it was! 

To make things as easy as possible, we booked an organised crossing with Giant Ibis. A friend had previously used them on their visit to Vietnam and said they had been really helpful, so it made sense for us to use them too. Their website is linked here: https://www.giantibis.com/ and we booked on to the ‘tour’ through 12Go –  we booked basically everything in Asia through 12Go.

I would also recommend doing your eVisa in advance as it can take a while to process and here’s the website we used – https://www.evisa.gov.kh/ . It much simpler to organise your visa in advance of crossing so you’re not waiting for one on the border. By using the eVisa you’ll also (hopefully) avoid any instances of border crossing b Lots of websites offer visa processing but the only one I’d recommend is the official Cambodian Government website which I’ve linked, as you’ll end up paying more if you’re using a 3rd party website. 

So to talk you through the whole process, I’ll give you a little break down of the day! 

We arrived at the Giant Ibis office in Ho Chi Minh early in the morning, there were lots of other backpackers also waiting so it was a little crowded but as we were there nice and early, Mike went to get some breakfast banh mi’s (had to squeeze in as many as possible) and other snacks and water for the journey. The crossing will take most of the day, we left Ho Chi Minh early and arrived at our Phnom Penh hostel as the sun was setting, so I would go prepared with snacks, water and movies downloaded.

When checking in at the Giant Ibis office, the staff will ask you for a copy of your e-visa for their records and you will receive your bus ticket in return. As they wanted the e-visa in physical format, we went to a computer and printing shop the day before and paid for printed copies. Some hostels will be able to print theses for you, but if not, there are plenty of shops in the city that will be able to do. We just googled the nearest one and popped over to get them printed off. Giant Ibis were also able to exchange money, so we changed the final scraps of our Vietnamese Dong into US dollars and local Cambodian currency. 

Once we were on the coach and on our way to the border, the guide gave us a brief explanation of the process and said he would be collecting our passports from us shortly. We were given a breakfast snack and a water for the ride which was a couple of hours long. Once we had handed our passports over, we didn’t see them again until we were at immigration control. This made me a little nervous but its standard procedure and the guides do this crossing every day. 

Arriving at the border, we left our main backpacks on the coach and just took our day bags and valuables into waiting area. Here we had a longish wait, around an hour, before the guide came to collect us. 

When he did, we left the first waiting area and walked to passport control. Our guide had everyones passports still, he then called us forward one by one to the exiting Vietnam immigration desk first. After everyone was through the leaving Vietnam part, we had around another half hour wait in the duty free area in the area of no mans land. The duty free area had a canteen and shops to browse, so we shared a snack to kill the time. 

Our guide returned and we headed back to the coach, we all jumped on and drove about 100m before getting back off. When we got off the bus, Cambodia border staff were waiting to collect our passports, before we then walked as a group on through to Cambodia. It was all very stop and start as we only walked another 30m before stopping to wait for the coach to be ‘searched’. It was a very brief search with just the luggage holds being opened for staff to poke their head in. 

Once the final check was done, everyone got back onto the bus and we waited for our guide who returned shortly after with all our passports. He returned them immediately to everyone and then it was over, we were in Cambodia and on our way to our first stop! It was a couple of hours to Phnom Penh and we arrived just before the sun went down. We exited the coach for the last time not far too from the hostel and jumped in a tuktuk as we were eager to get to the hostel.

The whole process was genuinely so smooth and not stressful so I wanted to write about our positive experience as a lot of people head from Cambodia to Vietnam but I couldn’t find much about going the way we did through the crossing, so I felt like we had a limited idea of what to expect so hopefully this will put your mind at ease if you’re going this way. 

Any questions, ask away! I’m always happy to help so contact me on my socials or leave a comment below!