Cambodia Travel Forum

I want to travel overland and/or sea from Bangkok to Kampot. Can someone advise on the best travel plan, please. Ideally I'd like to do it in a day, but realise I'll probably be doing well to get to Sihanoukville in a day. What is the coastal road like? Is that bridge finally open? What scams are at the border? Are there regular buses on both sides of the border? What is the boat option like? Any up-to-date advice gratefully received.

What I did is taking the speed boat from Sihanoukville to the border via Koh Kong, the boat leaves at 12:00 noon, arrived the border around 5:oo p.m., border crossing is fast, then take a small van to Trat (45 minutes), from Trat you can go onward to Pataya or Bangkok, it was around midnight the same day when I arrived Pataya, totally exhausted, you can do it the other way round, but check the departure time of the speed boat.

You have to get to Trat, in Thailand, and get over the border from their. You should plan on spending at least two hours on getting from trat over the boarder and into the border town in Cambodia (forgotten its name sorry). You wil have to catch a Bus the the Thai border from Trat, cross and then get a motor bike over the bridge to the Cambodian customs area (a sort of nowhere zone).
The easiest way to get to schnokiville is by fast boat, when i did it their was only two a day, so you will have to make sure you get a connecting boat (the agent you book through in Bangkok should be able to tell you when the leave). You will be able to get to Schnokiville that day,but as the previous poster has stated, it is a long journey, and you might be very late by the time you get to schonkiville.
To my knowledge the only way to get from Schnokiville to Kampot is Bus, their may be a train, but the trains in Cambodia are very slow and overcrowded (or the ones i caught were). If you are really desperate you might get to kampot in that day. I would just forget it however and lay up for the night in Shcnockiville, which has some lovely beahes anyway.
As for scams, none really, They mostly centerd where the tourist are, going over the nothern border to Siem Reip.

You can get to Kompot from Sihanoukville in a nice van run by 'Good day tours'. It goes once a day and is fast and comfortable. I saw their advertisement in the local flyer.