Word reaches me that my brand-new UK passport has actually gotten here in Pattaya. A surprise since I had actually been alerted that a wave of strikes was contributing to existing hold-ups going back to the pandemic lock-downs passport applications may stick around in HM Passport Workplace for months. In truth it took simply a little bit more than 6 weeks from despatch from Thailand to arrival in Pattaya. Rejoice, rejoice! At last something appears to be working.
Scanning the pages of my great burgundy coloured EU ex-PP, now corner clipped and cancelled, I come across a long ended Cambodian visa. A Proustian minute, vibrant memories awakened. I’m reclaimed to a pre-retirement visa time and the ‘visa run’. For me not a long mini-van journey from Pattaya however a brief 30 km drive from my Restriction Somboon house to the border at Chong Sa-Ngaam. It was at the height of the rainy season.
Here‘ s how I explained the experience to my blog site readers:
In the monsoon rains, Chong Sa-Ngaam feels an alien and even somewhat frightening area. This remote, little pre-owned border crossing straddling the kingdoms of Thailand and Cambodia is for me the nearby and most practical location to leave Thailand, get in and leave Cambodia, then return into Thailand to restore my 90 day Thai visa,
The roadway to Chong Sa-Ngaam is no significant highway simply a back road pitted with deep and harmful pot holes. At the frontier absolutely nothing appears long-term. It consists totally of ‘portacabins’ and momentary looking huts dotted along a dirty unsurfaced track. In the rainy season, which is now, the dust is relied on heavy exuding Isaan mud.
The scene here might be right out of among those Indochina war movies produced by the lots in the 1970s and 80s. Slit trenches and sand bags contribute to the slightly military feel. Frontier hopping residents stagger under the weight of substantial packages of strange product, others rotate greatly packed carts. All is rain, mud and heat tinged with an intangible stress. An environment easily stimulated by authors such as John Le Carré and Graham Greene.
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Even the most experienced tourists, and I now count myself amongst them, feel a mix of stress and anxiety and enjoyment in scenarios of this sort, alien and simply a little challenging. You are stepping actually into no-man’s land, for a couple of metres one nation has actually ended and another has yet to start.
Under a weapon metal sky and rugged black storm clouds the rain bristles non-stop down beating a drum tattoo on tin roofings. Thunder rumbles moodily in the range. Gathered under my umbrella, I fumble for passport and documents on the Thai side. A friendly sufficient authorities provides my passport a brief look and stamps it, in a way that totally forecasts his authority. Now I have actually formally left Thailand. However, yet, I am no place else.
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The couple of seconds it requires to cross the 20 approximately backyards, through rain and mud, to the Cambodian hut on the other side of the track are, for those of a delicate personality such as me, nervous minutes. I need to confess I have actually never ever cared much for Cambodia. I discover the nation a touch daunting. Its current history is sorrowful. The ghosts of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge appear even now to toxin the environment more than thirty years after the ending of that age of evil that caused a reign of horror and atrocity most likely unrivaled given that the time of Stalin. Atrocities for the many part performed with relish by 14 and 15-year-old Khmer Rouge cadres who should by now be middle-aged people.
This viewed scariness is motivated by something I was informed a long time earlier. Khmer operatives, I was notified, are the Bangkok Mafia’s favored workers for any grunt work to be done, intimidation, assassination etc. On conclusion of their project they easily slip back throughout the border and vanish into the hinterland.
Possibly an over-developed level of sensitivity to environment colours my understanding at Chong Sa-Ngaam, or the sticking around memory of television news video, however as I cross the 100 metres approximately of no-man’s land into Cambodia my febrile creativity creates a scene of helicopter gunships hovering on the horizon.
Regional border hoppers with their packages and carts become refugees either running away the Khmer Rouge or hurrying to sign up with. I can nearly see those teams of youths in red-check headscarfs and rubber tire shoes, that brought horror and death to millions. Enduring pictures of chaos and war extending, in this part of the world, back to the 1950s.
Truth requires an abrupt descent from my flight of dream. I discover myself standing at a dripping roofed outdoors counter. Throughout the counter inside the hut’s well roofed interior a stony dealt with Cambodian main faces me, using a firmly customized and well-pressed consistent decorated with badges.
” In– out? One thousand Baht,” he barks. Attempting ineptly to keep my umbrella, it’s still bristling, I quickly and awkwardly attempt to congregate cash and files without exposing them to the ruthless rainstorm, or dropping them in the exuding mud at my feet. This gets demanding.
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Tension intensifies my deafness, which constantly humiliates me and aggravates others. Arms and hands complete I am confronted with the obstacle of completing types. An old ‘post workplace’ type Biro on a string nailed to the counter is offered the function. I complete the files on the grained and grubby wood surface area while raindrops leak greatly and progressively turning the lightweight slips of paper to pulp.
There are the typical undeniable concerns. Arrival flight number or name of vessel? Address in Cambodia? Ultimate location? And, obviously, the important things you can never ever keep in mind– passport number? I need to ask the authorities for it back for the evasive number. He commends me with an appearance of exasperated resignation. This is undoubtedly something he needs to endure numerous times a day! Whatever needs to be finished two times. When for arrival, the other for departure. Both treatments are achieved within minutes of each other. One minute you remain in Cambodia, the next you’re gone once again.
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Simply 300 Baht please, for services rendered.
The trudge back to the Thai side is entirely calmer although there a repeat efficiency of kind filling and rubber marking. And there it is, I’m now here lawfully for another 90 days.
