I won’t make any mistakes: Poipet Cambodia is indeed a toilet. Aside from getting your Cambodia visa prior to continuing travel to Siem Reap or Phnom Penh, there is basically nothing to do in Poipet. Except, that is, for gambling.
How to Reach Poipet’s Casinos
Poipet’s casinos are located on the Cambodia side of the Thai-Cambodia border frontier. Once you de-board the train from Bangkok in Aranyaprathet, you must take a tuk-tuk (which should cost you no more than 40 baht) to the border frontier.
After you arrive at the frontier and clear Thai exit immigration, enter the line for Cambodia immigration. Here, you must purchase a Cambodian tourist visa ($25, payable in U.S. dollars or Thai baht). Once you have your visa, walk over the Cambodian border on foot.
Casinos begin appearing almost immediately. Inside the Poipet casinos you’ll find classic casino games such as slot machines, poker, blackjack and even roulette.
Currency in Cambodia
Although Cambodia technically uses a currency called the riel (not to be confused with the Brazilian real), the U.S. dollar is the de-facto currency of Cambodia. You’ll need cash to play inside Cambodian casinos, and ATMs in Poipet dispense cash in U.S. dollars.
Alternatively, you may be able to use leftover Thai baht in the casinos. I don’t remember if there were any money changers in Poipet — my gut is telling me there weren’t — but your best bet if you want to game seriously is either to bring U.S. dollars, or withdraw them from an ATM.
Visa Scams in Poipet
In addition to being ugly, Poipet is a toilet of sorts because people there tend to treat tourists like you-kn0w-what. Specifically, Poipet is a hotbed for a variety of scams.
The first of these is the fake visa scam. First and foremost, there are several fake immigration processing centers both before and after the real one. Cambodian “police” will try to direct you into queues for these fake borders, where other fake officers take your money and “deny” your visa application. You eventually end up in the right line, of course, but not after losing a substantial amount of money.
Indeed, if you’re OK with losing money in Poipet, it should be by design. Spend your money gambling in casinos, rather than wasting it and letting people scam you out of it.
Robert Schrader is a travel writer and photographer who’s been roaming the world independently since 2005, writing for publications such as “CNNGo” and “Shanghaiist” along the way. His blog, Leave Your Daily Hell, provides a mix of travel advice, destination guides and personal essays covering the more esoteric aspects of life as a traveler.
