Dream Travel Girl

Travel and personal growth

Border crossing Laos – Cambodia

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Information about the land border crossing Laos – Cambodia: transport and immigration including common scams. It is based on my own experience in January 2015, and updated many times with the feedback of other travelers. Last update: 2018. 

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I did not know that it was a hard border. I knew there was a lot of corruption in  one of the Thailand-Cambodia borders, but I ignored it was the same in the (only) Laos Cambodia border crossing. 

This is some information about the border completed with my experience there in January 2015, and updated with the comments from other travelers who where there in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Thanks to all the travelers who help keeping this information up to date! In encourage you to read their experience in the comments section at the end of the post.

Transport from Laos (4000 islands) to Cambodia

There are no cities nor villages next to the border (like Chiang Khong and Huay Xai in the Thailand-Laos border). So the best plan is to take a combined ferry-bus ticket directly from the islands to a city in Cambodia, either the one where you want to go, either Stung Treng, which is the closest one to the border.

  • All buses from the islands stop in Stung Treng. If you go to Siem Reap, Kratie or Phnom Penh you will have to change bus there (combined tickets exist).
  • Don Khon to Stung Treng: 17-18$
  • In Nakasan there is an exchange money place next to the bus station that has good rates to change lao kips to dollars.

The transport in the area is quite chaotic. I had booked a ticket (through my guesthouse in Don Khon) with a bus company, but I was sent to another company because they had sold more tickets than they had seats. The bus I was sent to was less comfortable than the one I had paid for, and it arrived later in Stung Treng. 

At the border

Visa on arrival: Either at the bus station, or on the bus, a man offers to get the visa for you. This is of course more expensive, and not really worth since doing it by yourself is not difficult (there are scams nobody can avoid, but it is not difficult. Additionally, I prefer to keep my passport with myself).

Money: In this border there are no banks nor ATM, so take enough money. In Cambodia dollars are accepted everywhere so no need to change to riels.

Coming out from Laos

In this specific border, you need to pay 2 dollars to get the stamp. I met people who left Laos through other borders and did not need to pay that, so not sure it is an official fee. In any case, no money, no stamp. 

Recommendation: try to give the exact money. One guy gave 10 dollars and was told they did not have change (strange, since everybody was paying the exact 2 dollars). His friend gave him 2 dollars, and when he gave them to the policeman, he got 5 dollars back instead of the 10 bill he had given. After a lot of discussion and a bit of shouting, he got his 10 dollars back. 

Entering Cambodia

Once you have the stamp in the Lao side, you walk to Cambodia. At the Cambodian side, there are three huts:

  • First, on the left: medical check. They give a paper to fill (asking where have you been and if you have symptoms of being sick), and charge you 1 dollar. This is not official, you can skip it (I did it because I did not dare to confront them, but later I saw people refusing to pay or just passing by without stopping there). 
  • Second, behind the stamp office: visa office. Fill the form, give one passport photograph, pay, and get your visa.
  • Third, on the right: stamp office. Fill the entrance-departure form, give it with the passport, get the stamp.

Note: the official price for the visa as for January 2015 is 30$. In this border, they charge 35$. Paying in other currencies is even more expensive.

Some people in my bus refused to pay 35$ and started discussing with the officials. The officials refused to give the visa for 30$. The guys waited. They waited for about two hours and finally gave up and paid 35$. One of them, the last one to give up, managed to pay 30$. Meanwhile, we were waiting (not sure if we waited for them or other people, we were told two people from Pakse should go into our bus). In any case, we were waiting two hours at the border.  

Stung Treng

Stung Treng is the closest city to the border (about one hour or two). All buses stop in Stung Treng, where people change to the buses to Siem Reap, Kratie or Phnom Penh. You can buy a combined ticket from Laos or buy your onward trip from Stung Treng. If you want to continue the trip the same day, it is easier to buy the combined ticket and probably about the same price.

Update April 2016: Julia wrote a detailed comment telling us about her experience at the border. She explains that the “buses” going from Stung Treng to Siem Reap were in fact overloaded mini vans. You can read the whole experience in the comments below. Thanks Julia!

I left Don Khon at 8:30 and reached Stung Treng at 13:30 or 14:00. There was a lunch break for the people who continued the trip in the afternoon, so I guess they reached Siem Reap or Phnom Penh quite late in the evening. I spent the night in Stung Treng (I do not like to reach my destination in the evening) and continued my trip to Ban Lung the day after. 

Have you recently crossed this border? How was your experience?

Would you like to read more? These are the posts I wrote about Cambodia: 

Kratie & Koh Trong  –  Phnom Penh  –  Kampot  –  Angkor Temples

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Comments

    • Thanks Rosemary! Sadly there is no way to avoid the scams but hopefully this post might be useful to know what to expect (and skip the medical check, this one is possible!). Happy travels 🙂

  3. Hi,
    we crossed this border a few months ago and managed to avoid all the scams, so I just wanna share the story that it might be useful for other travellers
    Safe travels to all,
    Eric

    On our transfer from Kratie to Don det, we ran into the classic 4 steps scam of Cambodia-Laos border crossing.

    Stage 1  the ‘ restaurant’ stop
    First they stop you in a restaurant for a bus transfer. There is a van there. But it leaves  and  they tell you to wait….  (so that you have lunch there and spend money…
    we didn’t and after waiting one hour, they said we have to wait 1h more.
    We said ” no, we want to go now. We don’t buy anything”
    Our spanish friend raised his voice and 5 minutes later, the bus was there (same bus and driver as the one that was there on arrival).

    Stage 2 border preamble
    200m from border, they stop us in a bar where a dodgy guy wants to ‘ help and explain’ with the border crossing charging us 5$ for this. We politely decline (we had read about him on the internet), and request to be taken to the border right away. They don’t. We start walkingaway They give in and take us there.

    Stage 3 Leaving Cambodia
    Now to the border crossing : the cambodian guard at the gate asks 2$ to stamp the passeport out of the country. We politely decline, pretending to be stupid, and wait while he checks our passports in detail.
    He finally gives in and stamps and returns the passports.

    Stage 4 : entering Laos
    Now to the Laos border. The tricky part. We pay the visa fee + and a 1$ ‘administrative fee’. Ok it’s officially announced on the booth…
    But then the guy in uniform refuses to return our passport unless we give him 2 $ each.
    We had read the trick that if you wait, you get into their ‘afterhours’ and it becomes even more expensive…
    So we just said we had no money.
    They said ‘go back to Cambodia’. My friend says that would be a ‘visa run’ and it’s illegal (and sometimes enforced since the bomb attack in thailand earlier this year)… Maybe the reference to ‘legality’ triggered something, so we scrape our pockets for 2000 riels and 17 baths (less than 1$ alltogether) and show them.
    We ask ‘is there an atm ?’ (we knew there wasn’t)
    in the end, after patience and staying polite, with the smile of Victoria and some diplomacy, we managed to get our passport back… for free !

    Stage 5 (same as stage 1)
    On the other side of the border, there is… another restaurant. They tell us to wait… 1 hour… we know the trick, sit outside the restaurant and start playing music and eating our pic nic. It seems they don’t like harmonica around here and that we woke up some people having a nap, because 5 minutes later, 2 tuktuk are there to take us to the harbour. Then everything went smooth,  as a boat dropped us on the sleeping island of don det.

    Conclusion : patience, calm, non confrontational approach with uniformed officials will get you far for free.

  4. Hi, we came from Don Det to Siem Reap yesterday. Same kind of scams – off the islands to a cafe where they gave us new tickets and Cambodian visa papers to complete and we waited for half an hour or so – some people were told to hand their passports over here – we didn’t. Then we were told to walk up to the bus station, another half an hour wait. Then the bus arrived “quick, we are late”, as if it’s our fault!

    On the bus the guy says he needs all our passports and $40 each. We refuse and say a Cambodian visa is $30. He, quite openly, says that this border is “corrupt” and it’s $35 here, plus $2 for Laos departure stamp plus money for “quarantine”. We refuse to hand over our passports and he says we’re going to delay the whole bus – divide and rule?! There were 5 of us who refused.

    At the border we 5 got off the bus and the others stayed on it – how do the Laotians know who’s leaving their country when they don’t even see them – a security joke! We had to pay $2 for our departure stamp – scam 1 and no alternative. A French couple refused to pay and tried to get into Cambodia without the stamp but they’re obviously in cahoots as the Cambodians checked for their departure stamp and wouldn’t give them a visa without it.

    Scam 2 – the quarantine desk – we filled in the forms but said, from the start, we had no money. We had our ‘temperature’ scanned and left without paying. The French couple just said they had all their vaccinations and walked on!

    Scam 3 – and this seems to be new – the Cambodian visa was $30 for the visa and $5 for the stamp. I argued at length and even showed them my visa from Siem Reap airport in January which clearly says $30 and they just kept repeating $30 for the visa and $5 for the stamp. We only had $60 so ended up paying the stamp fee in kip – they wanted 100,000 (well over $10) but accepted 85,000 which was all we had. It went straight into their top drawer. Then got the “stamp” but the visa doesn’t say how much we paid for it!! The French couple managed to get away with only paying $3 each for the stamp by simply saying they had no more money.

    We then joined our fellow bus passengers in another cafe by the road – again, the Cambodians hadn’t verified any of them against their passports – security, what security? We got in our bus and waited and were then told that everyone going to Siem Reap should get in another bus – clearly some kind of deal was being done by the drivers.

    We were then taken to Stung Treng and another “cafe” behind someone’s house – definitely not an official bus station. Again, we were told it would be about an hour and many people bought food – they even had the nerve to charge for the toilets! After about an hour our tickets were changed again and we were all piled into 2 mini vans which had been sitting there all along.

    Both minivans were overloaded and they picked up more locals off the roadside, which we all kicked off about. Our van broke a suspension pin with a hell of a bang, which they fixed on the roadside and carried on- absolutely terrifying. We were dropped in some back street area in Siem Reap.

    We think these scams are careful co-ordinated and planned from Laos to Cambodia. We were all told we would be on big buses in Cambodia and we think they’re taking the money for the big buses and then putting us in their unlicensed and, most probably, uninsured minivans. The border officials and the bus drivers etc are all in cahoots and obviously sharing the loot. I saw paper folded over and stapled to make an envelope and full of dollars on the desk of the “stamp” desk, clearly someone’s share. We all need to contact the Cambodian and Laos authorities in our home countries as well as locally to bring this to their attention before a minivan of travellers crashes and they are killed. This will happen.

    The problem is that once you’re a piece of cargo in their scam it’s impossible to get out unless you’re happy to be left at the roadside and pay twice – and they know this.

  5. Thankyou for the information! This is the most up to date I can find for the Laos/Cambodian crossing. I am heading to Laos within the next few days & will be keeping an eye out for all these little scams! It’s also nice to know there are VOA for Laos border. Information I have had trouble finding.

    • Hi Hannah!
      I’m happy you found this information useful 🙂
      Yes, there are visa on arrival in Laos and Cambodia for most nationalities.
      Good luck with the crossing and avoiding scams, and have a very nice trip!

  6. Thank you for all the experiences! Does any of you know how it is at the moment with brining a motorbike from Laos to Cambodia?

    Thanks!!

    • Hi Esther!
      Sorry, I don’t know anybody who hasn’t taken a motorbike from Laos to Cambodia. I hope you find someone who can help.
      Have a nice trip!

    • Thanks Donald for sharing your experience with us, I’m sure it will be useful to other people who might cross the border in the future 🙂

    • Very helpful!! We’ll be taking this same crossing in a few days, and it’s good to know what to expect. Thank you Donald!

  8. Hi Laia,

    This is all very useful! I will be travelling from Laos to Cambodia in January 🙂 2 small questions – I have requested a Visa from the embassy here. Would we still need to pay at the border if we have a visa?

    Also you mentioned staying in Stung Treng for the night when you arrived. Any chance it was a great stay? If so would be awesome if you could let me know the name. Just deciding if it’s worth going till Phnom Phen or maybe staying in Stung Treng for the night as you said.

    Thanks so much!
    Alexia

    • Hi Alexia,
      If you already have the visa for Cambodia, you won’t need to pay for the visa again. But I’m afraid you’ll still need to pay the US$2 tax to get the exit stamp from Laos. Once you have the exit stamp from Laos, go directly to get the entry stamp for Cambodia.
      Regarding Stung Treng, I’m really sorry but I don’t remember the name of the guesthouse. I was with two more people I met in the bus and a man offered to show us his guesthouse. I got a private room with private bathroom (no A/C, no hot water) for US$5.
      I don’t know if it’s better to stay in Stung Treng or go directly to Phnom Penh. Honestly I didn’t find Stung Treng very interesting, but it was a good way to break the trip and take some rest (it’s a long trip).
      Have a great trip!

  9. Update 5th March 2017: we crossed from Don Det, Lao to Cambodia. Booked a bus for 210.000kip in Don Det to Siem Reap, Cambodia. Took the boat at 8am on the next day. I only had 35$ and it worked. Although people say you need 39$. Anyway I paid 2$ for the Lao stamp. People also put money in the passport like 10.000kip. Worked too. On the next counter where you get an arrival card and a paper for emergencys they also want money what I didn’t paid just left. Don’t get them your passport. Then I paid 33$ and my last 2.000kip on the visa counter. I told him that’s all what I have. No other fees for us, although I heard people paid for the cambodian stamp again and a healt test. Maybe we only were lucky in a big group cause we heard many different stories. Good luck for everyone! Hope i could help.

    • Thank you so much Madeline! I’m sure your update will be very helpful for people who come across the border this year. Thanks again!

  10. Hi Laia!
    Another update: I crossed the border a couple of days ago, travelling from Don Det to Phnom Penh. I just had to pay the 35 USD for the visa on arrival – 30 USD was no option, some people tried. The stamp was for free and nobody complained that I ignored the health check.
    On the Lao side, the kind-of-official processing fee is 10.000 Kip, but they prefer to take 2 USD (about 16.000 Kip). There is a sign informing about this fee, but no receipt.
    In my impression, the main scammer was not the border control, but the bus operator. I had booked a “VIP bus” in Don Det, which turned out to be a series of five different vans and minibusses which were always packed. Plus the operators made us lose 3-4 hours in Stung Treng so that we could spend money in their restaurant. Which in turn made us arrive very late in Phnom Penh. It would have been much quicker just to go with them to Stung Treng and organise onward travel by myself.
    Here’s a detailled report with some photos:
    https://passportparty.ch/2017/08/29/border-29/
    Best, Daniel

    • Hi Daniel!
      Thanks a lot for your feedback. Yes, I agree about the tour operators… We had to wait for a couple of hours at the border (next to a restaurant) and the people who continued their travel after Stung Treng had to wait another couple of hours there. In addition to being completely unorganized and we were sent from one bus to another because they were all packed :/

  11. Hi Laia! I crossed the border on Dec 2017 and want to share my experience as the prodecure seemed a little different from what I read beforehand.

    We booked a boat + bus ticket to the border from Don Khon with green paradise travel for $8 and a mini van from the border to Siem Reap with AVT for $20.

    Boat was 20 min late, bus was 15 min late, but we still made it to the border before the big bus of people going to Siem Reap in one bus.

    To stamp out of Laos we payed $2. As I was waiting for my stamp, I saw a local bring in a bunch of passports and slip in 20,000 kip to get all the stamps. A couple beside who didn’t want to pay kept asking for the stamp and arguing with the official while holding up the line. The official got so angry that after much screaming he got up and threatened to throw his notebook to the guy.

    After the stamp we walked to the Lao side. We had read about the health office scam and decided to walk past it. I got horribly yelled at. I said I could come back to the health booth after getting my visa and still got yelled at. One of the officials ran to the visa booth while yelling to me to notify the booth and I was angrily told by the visa booth that I would not get a visa without the health slip. When I came back to the health booth I realized nobody who had a vaccination record to show had to pay. I had a basic Red Cross booklet and that was enough. The booth officer was very angry at me and told me I was not welcomed in the country. My husband couldn’t find his booklet and had to pay $2 to fill out a slip.

    At the visa booth I filled the form, gave the picture, and $30 dollars as quoted by the tourism of Cambodia office. The guy said it was $35. I explained I needed a tourist visa, which is $30, and not a business visa, which is $35. He stuck to asking for $35. This was the same guy who threatened to deny me a visa so I didn’t want to risk it. Had I known about the health slip and how it’s not quite a scam anymore (and apparently very official) I would have politely tried to make my case. The couple who refused the stamp out of Laos refused to pay $35 and got sent to a different office.

    The last step, stamp out, didn’t have a fee. We just filled departure cards, got foto and fingerprints taken, and walked way.

    The couple who refused to pay the unofficial fee came back sucessfully having payed only the $30 as is fair.

    If I were to do it again I would have chosen my battles: Lao side ok to fight because you won’t see them again. Only battle to fight in Cambodian side is the official quote for the visa, since the health slip and stamp out scams seem to have been removed.

    Word of advice: keep your cool and be as polite as possible. Officials temper is short, voices high, and they are prone to threaten and being disrespectful.

    • Thanks a lot Adriana for sharing your experience. This border seems to keep changing so getting an update about how it is in December 2017 is very appreciated.

  12. Hi Laia, Thanks for the report!

    Is there anybody who traveled from Laos to Cambodia and already got the visa before (applied for the eVisa for Cambodia beforehand)? Would love to hear about your experiences!

    Thanks, Maja

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