I was just about to go to bed the other night and for some reason I remembered that I still had my Passport in my laptop bag, where it had been since my last VISA run. So as I was putting it in my bedside draw I decided it was probably a good idea to check the date on my VISA. I knew the date was coming up, but though I should be better safe than sorry to check it... good job I did boys and girls, because your favourite super chump; me, had managed to completely overstay on his VISA. My VISA expired on the 2nd, and it was now 12am on the 3rd. At 500B overstay a day I was pretty freaked out and at the same time adamant that I had to do anything possible to sort it out ASAP. I knew that the VISA run bus runs every morning at 5am, costing 2000B for the run and renewal service. Usually, you need to book the service but I wasn’t going to let that get in my way, all I knew was that I had to get on the case. But when you only have 300B, the shit is hitting the fan man. Tail between legs I had to call and text everyone I knew who could lend me money (again). I feel terrible for all this, I really don’t think I can hack it for much longer; it has to be one of the most humiliating feelings, especially when you have to do it over and over as I have had to recently. After 30 minutes of frantic stress out I still couldn’t get through to anyone, I was getting pretty jittery.
I decided to go for broke and call the one person I felt I couldn’t ask again for money, the person who has been kind enough to lend me money the last time I needed to change my VISA – Rebecca. I feel so shitty about this, I hate being dependant and yet I seem to have been like this since year 0. I’m 26 now, what the frigg – a lot of my friends are now into their careers, they have bought cars, houses, gotten married – and here I am still leaching off my family and from my friends. What is going wrong? Why can’t I hack looking after myself? Other people do it – for Pete’s sake!
Eventually, I went to meet Rebecca we sat and drank for a couple of hours (with the politician detailed in the aforementioned post). She gave me 3000B to cover the VISA and the overstay, and again I can’t thank her enough for that help, I don’t know what I would have done at such short notice otherwise except for clock up 500B a day extra on my overstay charges. I had to get a taxi home and then pick up my Passport and then get to the departure point (with 5 mins to spare). Luckily I got on the bus and made it to the border.
These VISA runs are pretty hellish because I always decide it is a great idea to just stay up through the night before I get on the bus, and then either try to sleep on the bus or do some writing or something. This always ends up the same way – me being sat on a crowded bus, uncomfortable, tired and suffering from dehydration and the onset of a filthy hangover. By the time I get to the Cambodian border it’s about 9am and it’s getting hot and sweaty, the alcohol comes out, I smell I feel wrong in eight different ways. After I go through customs, pay my overstay and hand my passport back over to the good guys at Jack’s Golf (the company who orchestrate the VISA runs), we are led into the border limbo which, with the symptoms I am already suffering from becomes the most surreal place I have ever been to – we are led to a hotel/casino where we get a free buffet breakfast which destroys your digestive system, and then you wait for a couple of hours until its time to go back through the checkpoint.
This place then is like something out of a post-modern Western. I always think of the Alex Cox movie Straight to Hell, but it is basically gringo bandito’s in the dessert getting wasted on espresso and shooting shit up. So yeah, I get this impression from this place of it being the perfect place to make this insane film. It has so many ingredients – these crazy casino’s with loads of Japanese and Thai people gambling 24/7, fat bent coppers wielding big ass magnums, traders wheeling really bizarre carts and bikes around filled with all sorts of goods, pimps, dodgy opportunists, street kids begging and following you everywhere you go, security checkpoints with ridiculous signs such as grenades with a line through them, warnings of being caught with drugs being punishable by death and a whole host of other really surreal stuff. Couple this with the amount of stuff you can make up as well – the casino being like something out of Hotel California, the prospects of human trafficking and organ harvesting – it end up as having all the ingredients for something wild and special. I always leave this place in total disarray – I don’t know what is going on, the heat has hit me; the sleep deprivation has melted my brain, the hangover and buffet breakfast have destroyed the rest of my insides and I have usually had some pretty weird small talk conversations with some massive weirdo’s who I really hope don’t try to sit next to me on the way back. All in all I am pretty traumatised after all this. I can usually sleep on the way back, but it takes it out of me completely and by the time I get back to Bangkok at about 2:30pm, the remainder of the day is written off.
This time all the usual things happened, but with a few perks. I wrote the bulk of the story about the conversation I had with the politician on the way there, I had a half bottle of beer with me which got a bit leaky and I think is pretty much stank out the area of the bus I was sat on. I’m sure I pissed of the girl next to me with my lap-top tapping and stale alcohol smell. When I got to the checkpoint I started to make small talk with the sanest looking guy I have met on these runs – he was a good guy and we got on really well – which was a relief! I told him I was going to shoot a wink at the woman at the counter to see what would happen, I did and somehow and for some reason something worked out to my favour and she forgot to charge me for the overstay. A good start. I decided that I would take my breakfast slowly eating melon, drinking fruit juice and then taking a break to carry on writing before I tried to devour come bacon and toast with coffee. The coffee here is fucking dreadful, I don’t know what they make it out of but you know it is a bad thing when coffee comes out of a tap. Mix that with creamer/whitener and you are set for instant death.
I went and sat and had a good chat with my new friend, and we joked about the place and the stories that this place must hold in its historical vault. This kind of made the time pass in a tolerable way, but I was more than ready to get myself back on the bus and go. It was perhaps one of the nicer experiences I have had on these buses, but I am glad it is all over for now. The super-gay thing about this at the moment is that I have only been getting 2 week stamps on my VISA, so I will have to make the journey all over again on the 18th – presuming I don’t forget. I really could do with coming up with 6000B for this next trip as there is another service which means I can get a 3 month tourist VISA, but I would have to stay in Cambodian limbo hell for four days and three nights, but in the long run it’s more cost effective – even though the four day hell-ride could destroy me – we will see.#
Any ideas on the post-modern Cambodian border Western are welcome, because I think the scope is there for something magical. On my return I read the paper online and it turns out that about 100KM away at Phrasat Khao temple some intense fighting had broken out between Thai and Cambodian military which resulted in two Cambodian soldiers deaths. This site is one of constant fighting, especially over the last 6 months. The temple is a disputed territory, an ancient ruined temple right on the Thai/Cambodian border which has been landmined to hell. I think that this could be sneaked into the movie – dudes with rocket launchers, secret police all this stuff makes for a messy smelting pot of madness.
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