Every border crossing between the six countries

Eleven land and river gates join these countries. Three of them are closed. At four more, the e-visa you bought online is not valid. This is the table we plan from.

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Borders

Why this page exists

A multi-country trip through Southeast Asia lives or dies on its joins. Almost everything else is recoverable — a hotel can be changed, a temple can be seen the next morning — but a border you cannot cross on the day you planned to cross it takes the rest of the itinerary with it. In the last eighteen months two changes did exactly that to trips that were already paid for: the Thailand – Cambodia land border closed completely in June 2025 and has not reopened, and Laos published a list of nine ports at which its e-visa is valid, which quietly invalidated every e-visa bought for a Vietnamese land gate.

So we keep one table. It covers every land and river crossing between the six countries on this site, and it carries the date we last checked it against government sources rather than against other travel websites. Where a crossing has no official status page — and several do not — we say so instead of implying more certainty than exists.

All eleven gates

The table

Border	Crossing	Route	Time at the border	Status	What it means for your visa
Vietnam – Cambodia	Moc Bai – Bavet	Road, Ho Chi Minh City – Phnom Penh	6 – 7 h	Open	Cambodian e-visa accepted here. Your Vietnamese e-visa must name Moc Bai as the exit gate.
Vietnam – Cambodia	Ha Tien – Prek Chak	Road, Phu Quoc ferry – Kampot / Kep	3 h from Ha Tien to Kampot	Open	Take a Cambodian visa on arrival here (USD cash and a passport photo). The e-visa is not listed for this gate.
Vietnam – Laos	Lao Bao – Dansavanh	Road, Hue / Dong Ha – Savannakhet	7 – 8 h	Operating, no government status page	The Lao e-visa is not valid at this gate — buy a visa on arrival.
Vietnam – Laos	Nam Can – Nam Kan	Road, Vinh – Phonsavan	8 h	Operating, no government status page	Lao visa on arrival only.
Vietnam – Laos	Tay Trang – Sop Hun	Road, Dien Bien Phu – Muang Khua	5 h	Operating, no government status page	Lao visa on arrival only.
Thailand – Laos	Friendship Bridge I	Road, Nong Khai – Vientiane	30 min	Open	Lao e-visa valid. The Lao digital arrival form runs here.
Thailand – Laos	Friendship Bridge II	Road, Mukdahan – Savannakhet	30 min	Open	Lao e-visa valid.
Thailand – Laos	Friendship Bridge IV	Road, Chiang Khong – Huay Xai	30 min	Open	Lao e-visa valid. This is where the Mekong slow boat to Luang Prabang starts.
Laos – Cambodia	Nong Nok Khiene – Trapeang Kriel	Road, 4000 Islands – Stung Treng	2 h	Operating, no government status page	Cambodian e-visa accepted at Trapeang Kriel; leaving Laos needs no e-visa, but entering Laos this way does need a visa on arrival.
Thailand – Cambodia	Aranyaprathet – Poipet	Road, Bangkok – Siem Reap	—	Closed since 23 June 2025	Closed to tourists. Fly Bangkok – Siem Reap instead.
Thailand – Cambodia	Hat Lek – Cham Yeam	Road, Trat – Koh Kong	—	Closed since 23 June 2025	Closed to tourists.

Checked 20 September 2026

Verified against the UK and US government travel pages, the Lao e-visa portal’s own port list, the Royal Gazette notice behind Thailand’s September 2026 visa change, and Vietnam’s national tourism administration. Where the status column says “operating, no government status page”, it means the crossing is in daily use but no government publishes an open or closed status for it — we confirm those with our ground team before we sell a route through them.

Closed

The three that are closed

Every crossing on the Thailand – Cambodia border has been shut to tourists since 23 June 2025, including the two that carried almost all the traffic: Aranyaprathet – Poipet on the Bangkok – Siem Reap road, and Hat Lek – Cham Yeam on the coast road to Koh Kong. Both governments were still describing the border as closed at our last check, and there is no published reopening date.

If your route needs Bangkok and Siem Reap in the same trip, fly. It is about an hour and there are several flights a day.
Driving around the closure — south through Trat, or north through Laos — costs two to three days and is not worth it.
Any itinerary, blog post or agent quoting an overland Bangkok to Siem Reap day is working from pre-2025 information. That is the clearest test of whether the advice you are reading is current.

An empty road approaching a closed border checkpoint in Southeast Asia

Closed since June 2025

Visa traps

The four where your e-visa will not work

This is the expensive mistake, because it is invisible until you are standing at the barrier. An e-visa is issued for named ports of entry. Turn up somewhere else and it is not merely inconvenient — the document is not valid there, and the fee is not refunded.

Lao e-visaValid at nine ports only: the airports at Vientiane, Luang Prabang and Pakse, Friendship Bridges I, II and IV, the Boten checkpoint and the two railway stations. It is not valid at any Vietnamese land gate, not at Nong Nok Khiene coming from Cambodia, and not at Friendship Bridge III. At those you buy a visa on arrival.

Cambodian e-visaAccepted at Bavet, coming from Ho Chi Minh City, and at Trapeang Kriel, coming from the 4000 Islands. It is not listed for Prek Chak, the gate you use from Ha Tien and Phu Quoc — there it is a visa on arrival, in US dollars cash, with a passport photo.

Vietnamese e-visaValid at designated land gates, but only the ones you named on the application. The entry and exit points are fixed when you apply and cannot be changed afterwards; changing your mind means applying again.

Printed, not on a phoneThe Lao e-visa must be presented on paper. A photograph of it on a screen is refused at the counter.

Timing

What a border day actually costs you

Assume a land crossing takes half a day even when everything works. The formalities themselves are usually twenty minutes to an hour on each side, but the gates are rarely next to the places you want to be: Moc Bai is two hours from Ho Chi Minh City and four to five more from Phnom Penh, and Lao Bao is three hours from Hue with another four beyond it. Vehicles change at the line — your Vietnamese driver stops there and a Cambodian or Lao driver meets you on the other side — which is normal, and is the part that goes wrong when nobody has arranged it.

Passport, printed visa documents and a pen for the arrival form — filling it in before the queue saves twenty minutes.
US dollars in clean, untorn notes for any visa on arrival, plus a passport photograph. Torn notes are refused.
Small local currency for the last few kilometres on the far side.
A named contact on the other side. We brief both drivers with each other’s phone numbers before the day.

One practical point

Crossings keep office hours and several close well before dark. We plan a land border for the morning, never for the end of a long driving day.

By water

The river crossings

Two water routes come up often enough to be worth naming. The Mekong slow boat from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang is two days with a night at Pak Beng; the immigration formalities are done on land at Friendship Bridge IV, not on the boat, so the crossing itself is a normal land crossing and the river journey that follows is domestic Lao transport. The Chau Doc to Phnom Penh boat up the Mekong is the other, and it is the one we are most careful about: it runs commercially, but no government publishes its status, sailings are seasonal, and we confirm it for your dates before putting it in a route rather than assuming it.

A wooden slow boat carrying passengers down the Mekong river in northern Laos

A passenger boat on the Mekong river near the Vietnam – Cambodia border

The Mekong slow boat · The Mekong at the Cambodian border

How we use this table

When you send us dates and a list of countries, this is the first thing we open. It decides the direction of travel — north to south or the reverse — which country you fly into, which visa you apply for and in what order, and where the slack day goes. If a route only works with a crossing we cannot confirm, we say so and offer the flight instead of hoping.

Plan My Trip

Tell us which countries

We will tell you which crossings your route needs, what each one requires, and what we would do instead if one closes.

Plan My Trip

Common questions

Questions travellers ask most

Is the Thailand – Cambodia border really still closed?

Yes. It has been closed to tourists since 23 June 2025, at every crossing including Poipet and Hat Lek, and no reopening date has been published. Bangkok to Siem Reap is a one-hour flight and that is how we route it.

Can I get a visa on arrival at any land border?

Cambodia and Laos sell visas on arrival at their main land gates, in US dollars cash with a passport photo. Vietnam does not: you need an e-visa or an exemption before you reach the gate, and the e-visa must already name that gate.

How early should I apply for the visas my route needs?

About a week for Cambodia, five days or more for Laos, and three to five working days for Vietnam — but the constraint that matters is not the processing time, it is that the Vietnamese and Lao documents are tied to specific gates. Settle the route first, then apply.

Why do you not publish the fees?

Because they change without announcement, and a wrong figure on a travel website is worse than no figure. We link you to the official portal for your nationality and your coordinator confirms the current amount before you travel.

Journey ideas