Sharing is Living

Well, for a 3rd world country, and a country that has gone through horror, Cambodia is doing really well on the tourism industry. Whoever heard about e-visa? Before my trip, I never did.

Plane e-tickets, concert e-tickets, yeah sure. But e-visa? That’s really genius-ity!

It costs $20 for a normal tourist visa, but it’s $25 for the E-visa. I chose E-visa because I was pressed against time. I had booked a tour early for the morning of our arrival, and our plane was shceduled to land very close to the starting time. So e-visa it was, because supposedly they process the immigration line faster (not true).

The simple process of applying for e-visa:

1. I took our pictures using a digital camera, used my bedroom wall as the white background, upload it to the computer, cropped it a bit, and attached it to the application form.
2. In the morning around 10am, filled out the form, with our passport info. Tedious.
3. Paid the visa fees using Paypal (Ha! A country’s government using Paypal? It was like I was in a twilight zone or something)
4. Submitted the application.
5. Got an automatic confirmation in the email box almost instantly.
6. Yada yada yada
7. Around 1pm in the afternoon, received our E-visa PDF files in the mailbox!

Good lord. What could be easier? I was in awe then. I am still in awe now. I can only speculate why a federal government would do such a thing. One, because they really want tourists to come so they make it too simple to resist. Two, Sokimex, the company that runs the Angkor Wat and therefore gets most of the profits, has some sort of big pull on the government, so they concocted this e-visa thing (another proof how private companies are more efficient than government). Three, thhe government don’t see immigrants/touritst as threats (Imagine the U.S. adopting E-visa process).

I am totally not complaining! But I’m just in shock…in shock…(Click here if you’d like to read more about Cambodian visa and download the paper Cambodian Visa application)

Visit Cambodia, it’s an amazing country.. amazing..

http://evisa.mfaic.gov.kh/