Cambodian Scam Centers

In early September, I needed to do a visa run from Vietnam. Instead of treating it as a purely administrative chore, I decided to use it as an excuse to explore somewhere I knew almost nothing about: Bavet, Cambodia. Bavet (red circle) sits directly across the border from Vietnam and is best known for its casinos, factories, and heavy Chinese influence. I had also been reading about Cambodia’s crackdown on scam centers, and someone I had briefly dated in Vietnam had mentioned that her company operated a factory there. In the image above, I orange circled the other (now defunct?) scam town that supposedly moved operations to Bavet after the police crack downs in the region. That combination made me curious. What was Bavet actually like? Most foreigners I know don’t spend any time there. Depending on your Vietnamese immigration status, crossing the border can be remarkably uneventful: leave Vietnam, enter Cambodia, turn around, and come back. In some cases, people barely make it beyond…