ILLEGAL border crossing at Sungai Kolok, Thailand

ILLEGAL border crossing at Sungai Kolok, Thailand

This is the town of Sungai Kolok, just across the border with Malaysia. And it’s late in the afternoon, pretty hot, but there is also wind. And I have Malaysian Ringgit I have to exchange, otherwise I can’t buy any dinner here, so that’s what I’m going to do. There is a money changer there, I saw that on the map. It doesn’t look too official. But I have 450 Ringgit to exchange, that’s about 100 euros, should get me 3400 Baht. Official rate, that’s the Google rate. KTB. We are in the deep south of Thailand today. Which is… which has a different culture than the area of Bangkok. There is a lot of Muslim people here and also a lot of Chinese still. Doesn’t feel very touristy here. I haven’t seen any obviously foreign tourists here. That goes eeh.. the same for the train earlier. I was the only obvious foreigner. I know why, and we’ll discuss later. It says money exchange, let’s see if that’s possible. I have Malaysian Ringgit, 450? [foreign language] Thank you very much. And I got more than I bargained for. That’s almost the Google rate. That’s good. That was a really good rate. Let’s get some food. I saw a Chinese restaurant here somewhere earlier. I don’t know where I came from earlier. I walked all the way from the train station. But it’s the same streets here. At least, they are paved. Border town experience. I’ve never really stayed in a border town for a night. It sounds really exiting. It probably isn’t but we’ll find out. I walked this street and there was a restaurant over there. Looks nice though, like this. Clean air. It’s just a little town. People are shouting here. He’s talking to his phone though, not to me. Hmm. I don’t know if it was this one, because this one is closed. Yeah, that’s this one. Ooh.. That’s a little bit sad. This was open and really busy, just an hour or two ago. Ooh well, we’ll find something else. Like I have said in an earlier video, when I was traveling all the way south of Bangkok, there are no Romanized information signs here. It’s all in Thai, a little bit Chinese and a little bit Arabic I have even seen here, and Malay. Malay I can read, I can probably understand but eeh.. that’s a pharmacy, that’s English though. But there is no English transliteration of texts here. Which can make it a little bit challenging but hey we’re here to learn something new, I guess. The thing is, the further I walk now, the further I have to walk back to my hotel once I’m finished eating. Keep that in mind. Pakistani Mosque. That’s what it says ‘Masjid Pakistan’. That says restaurant. Chinese restaurant. Guessing from the sign. I’m hungry either way, so if it’s open… Let’s see, let’s see. Fried rice. Pork. Chicken. I think that works. Curry, wow. Hello! I saw a temple in the distance and when we are there, we are going to take a left. Slowly make our way to the border, carefully not crossing it because I don’t bring my passport with me when I’m walking. Sungai Kolok is a town just across the border with Malaysia in Thailand and if we keep walking this way, we’ll end up in Malaysia again. We’d have to swim across because there’s a river. So if we get wet feet, that’s the indication we went too far today. I’ll be leaving Thailand in a few days’ time. Not in the neighborhood here though. I’ll be departing from Nong Khai, all the way up north, the border with Laos or Lao as it’s officially named. We are going to take a left here so we have the sun from behind. Sungai Kolok isn’t a well-known place to travel for foreign tourists as far as I understand and see now. As I said earlier, there were no tourists, obvious tourists, on my train and I didn’t see anyone crossing the border as well. I walked it. Just now at my hotel when walking outside I saw two obvious foreigners. Now it’s an easy afternoon here. Kid in the arm, look. Kid on one leg. That’s my first weed shop I see here. GreenRush Thailand legalized recreational marihuana for everything except for smoking last year and they already want to revert it this year again. So if we walk straight here, we will end up at the border again. The river. I hope we can see it. I lowered my camera because I noticed I was recording a security post. I think my camera cut out a few minutes ago. So I’ll tell you the story again from the … what the driver told me. Driver from Malaysia that brought me to the border. He told me that there are Thai cars that have a special additional license plate. Registration for Malaysia, so they can enter Malaysia without any problem. There’s a lot of trade here across the border. People live of that here on both.. on both sides of the border. When Covid struck, that shut down for a really long time. Which means, no income for a really long time. Now everything is back open again, people are happy and working again. So we are at the very end of the road. Probably we can cross here, but we don’t want to do that. This is a little village kampung, as we call it in Indonesian, with a lot of Muslims. We’re not going to cross here, we can cross here. Hello. So, this crossing. We’re in Thailand. And that’s Malaysia. I’m not sure how that works without border control. That’s actually really funny. I’ve never seen this before. I’ve only seen this on YouTube With Peter Santenello, if I’m not wrong, doing the Rio Grande. I guess this is my Rio Grande story. No video. Ooh. Sorry, sorry. Okay, Okay. Now, I can make a very long story about what really happened after I turned off my camera, but the fact is. Nothing happened. I was simply told that I could not film this obviously illegal border crossing, turned off my camera and noped the fugg out of there straight away. As simple as that. I have to admit that my heart was racing though, so I took a little bit to get back to filming, but here it is… Someone in a uniform with a lot of green told me I can’t film, so of course I stopped filming. But I saw in his face he was in doubt. He didn’t ask me to remove anything, just was happy that I obliged to turn off the camera. So I have my two minutes of fame of an illegal border crossing I guess. Allegedly an illegal border crossing, I’m not sure it’s illegal. But there were no border posts on both sides of the border, that’s for sure. I’m not going back here. I need to save this video. Yeah, I’m no Peter Santenello that makes documentaries about the River Grande and stuff. I just noticed there was a river and I saw this crossing when I crossed into Malay.. eeh Thailand through the official route, so I thought it’s a good idea to have a look at it. Anyway, let’s slow down for a bit because I was fast-walking it out of there. So this is the Grand Garden Hotel. Looks kind of brutalist to me. I don’t see any garden as well, but must be nice at night for the ghosts. My battery is almost done for the evening which means you will catch me tomorrow morning when I’m walking to the train station to get on a train to the town of Yala, which is in the heart of ‘orange territory’ Dutch citizens like me. Which means not safe to travel but there is no ban on traveling there. If I think it would be unsafe to travel I wouldn’t go there. I think it’s safe enough for me to travel, I’m also here and I feel perfectly fine. This is the same orange as Yala city is. Yala town is. Should be perfectly safe.

My first afternoon in southern Thailand I spent walking around the border town of Sungai Kolok. I found an eeh.. ‘interesting’ river crossing during my walk. Although walking into the late afternoon and evening, it’s perfectly safe here for me, in contrary to what many people told me.

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▶️ Chapters
00:00 – Money changer
02:36 – Restaurant search
07:01 – Later that day
09:27 – Illegal border crossing
11:49 – Aftermath

▶️ Related clips
There are security posts like this everywhere in Sungai Kolok

A spooky hotel in Sungai Kolok

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▶️ Tags
Southeast Asia overland, Thailand border, Malaysia border, Sungai Kolok, bordertown, illegal border crossing, illegal border, illegal crossing, river Kolok, Golok river, Su-ngai Kolok