This is one is probably for the regular visa runners or Poi Pet casino hoppers. I am planning a field trip in Sa Kaeo. How long is the drive from Bangkok to Aranyaprathet in a regular minibus? Anyone with overnight driving experience or related travel recommendations?

It's been quite a few years since I've done that "run", but I remember starting early in the morning and getting back around cocktail hour or so.

I have a rule with countries like Thailand, don't drive after dark if you can help it. In Mexico and India, it's basically a rule.

I read the reports here all the time and the bad accidents are usually at night. Not sure it's worth the risk.

This won't be a round-trip on same day so if anyone can best estimate the one-way travel time, helps me to gauge when we need to get out of Bangkok and how much time remaining in the day for reconnoitering.

To be honest, I drive regularly to Udon and back and much prefer the night drive as all the trucks park up overnight and there's only the overnight 'rapid transit' pickups and tour buses to deal with. Time the trip right and one can avoid them as well. Daytime is fraught with trying to avoid towns during peak hours and the cops with their BS-band radar traps. However, since the run to Aranya will be a first for me, someone else will be driving!

I left Lumpini Park for a visa run to Poipet at 7.30am. Arrived Poipet about 11.30am. No traffic jam at all with stopover at a petrol station (and one of the cleanest outback toilet I've seen in my life!) for about 20mins.

I left Lumpini Park for a visa run to Poipet at 7.30am. Arrived Poipet about 11.30am. No traffic jam at all with stopover at a petrol station (and one of the cleanest outback toilet I've seen in my life!) for about 20mins.

That's about right, and depends on at least two items:

-- where you start from in Bangkok, in order to hit an Expressway, and

-- which route you take, Hwy 304 (Ramintra-Minn Buri) to Chachoensao-Phnom Sarakham-Kabin Buri, where you turn right to Sakeo and Aran,

or Hwy 305 east of Rangsit out to Nakhon Nayok where you hang a right on Hwy 33 bypassing Prachin Buri and on to Kabin Buri and on.

FYI, I see the blue tour buses from MoChit all the time on the Hwy 305 road marked for Aran and the Talat Rong-Kluea.

Mac

This won't be a round-trip on same day so if anyone can best estimate the one-way travel time, helps me to gauge when we need to get out of Bangkok and how much time remaining in the day for reconnoitering.

To be honest, I drive regularly to Udon and back and much prefer the night drive as all the trucks park up overnight and there's only the overnight 'rapid transit' pickups and tour buses to deal with. Time the trip right and one can avoid them as well. Daytime is fraught with trying to avoid towns during peak hours and the cops with their BS-band radar traps. However, since the run to Aranya will be a first for me, someone else will be driving!

Could be...but many of the bad accidents I see involve a big truck and happen at night. Several every week in our area, especially on highway 36. Really bad there. Those truck drivers think they own the road...

But for sure, no BS-band radar traps at night!!!