I am due to go to Phenom Penh with my girlfriend who is Mexican and needs to renew a tourist visa. We have been hearing some "stories" of how difficult it is to deal with this embassy. Can anyone give me some feedback on this? This is an important run for her and I don't want to experience anymore than the usual issues. Thanks in advance.

Personally I would never go there again on a visa run. I had scrupulously prepared (with the help of a Thai lawyer specialising in visa matters) all the documentation in advance for a work visa. The lady concerned barely looked at in before handing it back saying a) it's no good (no clarification why not) and b ) why do you come to Phnom Penh, we are here to look after Cambodians. No amount of pleading would even get her to look at it again. In the end I re-submitted a request for a standard tourist visa - which she promptly refused, on the grounds that I really wanted a work visa.

I had all the documentation for the setting up of a branch of my own shipping company in Thailand, a bona fide business that has been established in the UK for twenty years. This wasn't some sort of dodgy teaching job thing.

After two more visits, they grudgingly agreed to accept my tourist visa request when I assured them that as the boss of my own company, I didn't need to work over the next three months, and wouldn't do so. A look at my Thai bank deposit account helped. The tourist visa was eventually issued.

Not the same situation as a direct tourist visa request such as yours, but just to point out that the impression I had was of deliberate discouragement of farangs from going to Phnom Penh for their visas.

Edited October 25, 200817 yr by wedders

go to lao.

Wedders reply is the most common response you are going to get.

Unless you have other reasons for going to Phenom Penh it's not worth the trouble to go there for a visa from all the reports I have seen.

Thanks, wedders. Now we have confirmation that nothing has changed in Phnom Penh, that the Thai embassy/consulate there continues to be the worst place in the region for a visa application.

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Maestro