Pattaya – but not for the usual reasons

After peaceful days on the 4000 islands in the Mekong, I took the ferry back to Nakasong on March 4, 2026, again in the rain. There I boarded the bus for a long journey of almost ten hours to Phnom Penh. The entry into Cambodia almost failed: I had bought an electronic arrival card online and downloaded it to my phone. However, the Cambodian border officers required a printed version in two copies.

I felt a bit like Kafka: How is a person supposed to print a form when there's not a printer in sight? I had been warned: Without a handful of dollars discreetly handed over, I would not get into Cambodia. I wandered from office to office in search of a solution, being turned away here and not understood there. Sweat soaked my polo shirt.

Eventually, I ended up in the office of a younger man who spoke excellent English and worked in a tidy, pleasantly air-conditioned room. Although he claimed he was not responsible; I was allowed to email him the form, and he printed it in two copies (of which I never needed one). He refused any payment.

Apparently, the story of the old man causing trouble at customs had spread. In any case, I was suddenly treated preferentially, directed past the queue to an available counter and processed there without further complications – all without even a single dollar changing hands. Sometimes, advanced age has its positive sides, especially in this part of the world, where older people are still respected and not, as at home, scorned as useless beneficiaries of the pension system.

Deepening the Familiar

Maybe it has something to do with age: Sometimes I prefer to deepen the familiar rather than discover something new. So I spent the next two weeks first in Phnom Penh, then in Bangkok, and finally in the Isaan region, all of which I have extensively described in previous blogs. On March 22, 2026, I was driven by an acquaintance in a Toyota pickup from Buriram in Isaan to Pattaya.

Pattaya? Yes, Pattaya, the Thai capital of the sex industry, decadent and crazy. 70,000 hotel beds, ten or more million tourists a year. Of course, I also took a dip into the nightlife later in the evening, heading to the waterfront, Soi 6, Soi 8, and the Walking Street. But I didn't make a stop in this gigantic tourism machine for that reason while on my way to the small island of Koh Samed for more relaxed days. Rather, I wanted to finally visit the Sanctuary of Truth, the