To stock her Phsar Thmei stall with new clothes, Bou Sarady, 51, must travel to Thailand once or twice a month. This month, her stall is filled with outdated styles.
After Cambodians set fire to the Thai Embassy Jan 29, causing diplomatic relations between the two countries to be downgraded to their lowest level in years, her Thai shopping trip turned into a bureaucratic waiting game.
“We have been waiting for almost a month to buy a visa,” Bou Sarady said, waiting among hundreds of other applicants and listening for her number to be called outside the Thai consulate.
The consulate has been temporarily relocated across Street 466 from the Ministry of Interior.
“Many people come. It looks like water flowing through a broken dike,” Bou Sarady said.
The Thai consulate reopened Monday for the first time since the riots. Since then, approximately 200 visa applications have been filed each day, an embassy official said Thursday. The application procedure is slower than normal, because five embassy employees must cope with a month’s worth of documents.
Before the computers and software needed to process the visas were destroyed, 300 to 400 applications were filed a day, the official said. Most applicants are Cambodian nationals applying for transit and tourist visas, said the official, who asked not to be named.
About 200 people per day are granted visas, the official said.
They must pass through gates and face strict security checks. Military police armed with AK-47 and M-16 rifles stand guard outside the compound, monitoring applicants as they shuffle through a metal detector.
(Additional reporting by Kate Woodsome)
