Cambodia, Exciting Times For This Frontier Country

At the Cambodia Stock Exchange (CSX)

We are proud holders of a Cambodian bank account and in process of getting an official Investor ID through the Cambodian Securities Exchange Commission to obtain a brokerage trading account to start trading stock in Cambodia!  

Hit the brakes!  What?!  Okay, back up for a second.  Allow us to explain...

This is an unusual write up for a travel blog in that we want to talk about the emerging Cambodian economy and stock market.  

Before you hit the snooze button, let us say that this is a very exciting time for Cambodia.  It's more civilized than the wild-wild East that it used to be about 10-15 years ago.  However, it is still a sleepy, raw, unrefined frontier country, starting to wake up to the 21st century. 

CSX, How to Open An Account to Trade on the Cambodian Stock Exchange

Are you interested in opening the necessary accounts in order to have one of the "front-row" seats to invest and watch the Cambodia Stock Exchange (CSX) take off?  Here's how we went through the process of being able to trade on the CSX.

Glad It's Over: Thai-Cambodia Overland Border Crossing

Today was yet another "adventurous" overland border crossing kind of day from Thailand to Cambodia.  This was right up there with the complicated, anxiety-provoking overland border crossing from Ecuador to Peru that we did back in May. 

We've read and heard a lot of chatter about the potential pitfalls and traveler nightmares of crossing the Cambodian border. Perhaps a visit to these sites for some inspiration:  Seat61, Poipet - WikiTravel, Cambodia: Poipet - A Warning. 

It's not that we were worried about whether or not immigration will let us in.  We already had our $25/pp Cambodian e-visas issued in advance.  It's all about getting across the border and to our destination without getting scammed...too much.  Basically, bribes and scams are rampant in this stereotypically rundown border town of Poipet, Cambodia, and oblivious tourists are the main target.  Though this may not be a true representation of Cambodia, it is a good representation of most corrupt border towns around the world, and Cambodia is no exception.

By now, you should know that we made it across the border to live and tell about our experience!  So, how did we do?  

Here's what our 13-hour travel day looked like...

A Headache to Deal With Bank Card Fraud While Traveling

We reported back in June that there may have been unauthorized use of one of our bank debit cards we use to withdraw money only (we never use it as a credit card).  After discussing with the claims department, the charges were reversed and the incident never occurred again so we thought it might have been just an honest mistake of wrong account number or something.  (During the same time, we did have a confirmed fraudulent charge on one of our credit cards, which we immediately canceled.  Fortunately, it wasn't one of the cards we are traveling with).  

Fast forward to September.  We recently discovered 2 new unauthorized charges on the same bank debit card and this time, we immediately got it stopped.  Bad news (besides the fraud)? We're now down an ATM card.  Good news?  We carry debit cards for 2 separate accounts so we still have the ability to withdraw money.  Except, when one doesn't work, we don't have a backup debit card.  We've come across this several times on our journey already where one works but the other doesn't...so, we were worried about getting the replacement card quickly.  

Quirks and Difficulties of Traveling Through the Balkans

From Sarajevo, we literally didn't have an exit plan because we couldn't make a decision on which direction to head.  We thought about going south towards Mostar, Bosnia and Hercegovina (BiH), then Montenegro, then Albania, but we found out that Albania does not allow public transportation to cross its borders from some of the other Balkan states.  It didn't sound like something we wanted to hassle with.

We considered taking a more off-the-beaten-path route, but again, cross-country transportation outside of major cities is sparse and lodging unreliable.  

We really wanted to raft down the super-deep Tara Canyon river in Montenegro, then go east through Kosovo, then Serbia, but getting to and out of Tara Canyon sounded like it would take many extra days.  Also, we're very glad we didn't do this route because Serbia would not have allowed entry had we gone through Kosovo first.  It has to do with territorial disputes about Serbia's claim over Kosovo, and it's complicated, but Serbia considers going through Kosovo first, an illegal border crossing.

Basically, we've considered several different itineraries each time, but most are eliminated due to transportation or border crossing issues.  The places we've been during the past 2 weeks represent the path of least resistance.

Train Ride From Zagreb to Sarajevo

We found out that taking the train is a pretty simple way of getting from Zagreb, Croatia to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Hercegovina (BiH).  At the main train terminal in Zagreb, we checked the published departure schedule, looking for the train that goes to Sarajevo.  It was difficult to find within the fine print, but saw there are 2 departures daily.  The first one leaves daily at 8:53 am with a final destination to Ploce, stopping at Sarajevo along the way.  The other is an overnight train.  We read that the Croatian and BiH scenery is not to be missed, and the numerous interruptions by ticket verifiers, passport controls, customs personnel, etc. would prevent anyone from getting much sleep anyway; so we chose to travel during the daytime.  

Warning About Trying to Exchange Argentine Pesos to US Dollars

Read carefully if you, or someone you know is planning on traveling to Argentina in the near future, because we just lost an equivalent of ~USD$200 dollars.  How?  

When we were leaving Buenos Aires, we still had about AR$1200 pesos leftover; however, due to recent Argentine monetary policies (more on that in a moment), no legitimate currency exchange house will trade AR$ pesos into US dollars or Euros or any other currency for that matter.  Basically, we are sitting on a pile of cash that is only good in Argentina.  Unless we go back to Argentina, we might as well use it as toilet tissue because it's just paper to the rest of the world.