I always swore I never wanted to drive a car in Cambodia. I lasted 11 years... but then I moved to the province.
Soon after that, colleagues in Phnom Penh asked if I'd be willing to borrow their car in June and July during their trip to the US, so it wouldn't sit idle that whole time. So I found myself undertaking a process that I'd never particularly looked forward to, and it turned out much more difficult than I'd expected.
If you're an expat wanting a Cambodian license (not an international license converted from your passport country), don't despair! For me, it was worth it despite all the grief. It is possible to pass the test, and I'd love to share with you what I learned from my experience in hopes of improving yours. You can find my study notes, tips, and illustrations in this 15-page Google doc. (Or you can pay a driving school to pay off the instructors and make sure you'll pass the first time.) But if you're here more for the story than its moral, read on.
How to get a Cambodian driver's license in 66 easy steps
1. Ride a public taxi for 5 hours to Phnom Penh.
2. Take your US driver's license, passport, several ID photos, and $45 in cash to the driver's license center at the mall.
3. Find out you need a residency letter from the regional government. This normally requires a lease with your name on it, which you've never had. You also need to convert your international driver's licence at least one month before it expires in September, but not within 30 days of your visa's expiry date in late July, so basically you have three months to get it done.
4. Ask your former landlady if she'll write a lease for you. In your 4 years living there, you were never listed on a lease; there was just an unofficial agreement. Argue politely that you're still keeping stuff at your old place and visiting monthly, and you were sharing the rent with a friend until recently. She kindly agrees to put you on a 2-year lease.
5. Meet landlady and recruit 2 witnesses to watch you sign the 2-page document she printed out in Khmer. Wonder if this could pose future issues if your friend moves out in less than two years. Hope for the best since there's usually a high demand for this kind of apartment.
6. Call a guy who helps foreigners get residency letters. He says it will take at least 3 business days, which would be fine except that it's Saturday and you need to drive 5 hours back home tomorrow. Can they rush for you? Probably not.
7. Learn from this guy that the landlady's lease will not be official enough to merit a residency letter at the government office. He says you need to pay him for a six-page lease and start over with the landlady... but you don't have time to meet her again before you leave.
8. Return to Preah Vihear wondering if you'll ever get a license.
9. Ask housemates if their landlord would consider adding you to their lease, which hasn't been updated in ten years, even though leases generally only list one name for the entire rental property. They suggest trying to get a residency letter without a lease, since the Preah Vihear office is sometimes more relaxed than in Phnom Penh.
10. Wait a couple weeks for the office to reopen after Cambodian New Year.
11. Go to the office and wait a few hours. Notice the enclosed dirt area out front, which your housemate refers to as the "cow impoundment lot" for residents' stray livestock.
12. Be pleasantly surprised when they give you a residency letter on your word that you are staying with your housemates, whom the employees have known for over a decade.
13. Ask an employee to reprint the letter four times to correct your name, birth date, passport expiration date, and visa number.
14. Leave the office hours later amazed to have a residency letter in hand, without having shown proof of residency or paid any money.
15. Drive five hours back to Phnom Penh for other commitments. Bring the residency letter and other documents to the driver's license center on a Monday, a few days into your 9-day trip.
16. Reply "no" when they ask if you've ever had an international driver's license. Receive the startling news that you technically had one for a year long ago when licenses were required even for motor scooters under 125 CC. Since it expired in 2012, a late fee of $0.12 per day has been accumulating, totaling nearly $500.
17. Argue that you never drove a car during that decade, weren't required to have a license for your motor scooter, and lived outside Cambodia for two years of that period. Admit defeat when the sympathetic employee does not budge.
18. Try to understand the employee's advice in Khmer to avoid the fee by taking the national driver's test, which includes theory and practical sections. Take down the center's phone number and address at the Heavy Truck Training Center, 45 minutes outside town.
19. Find out that your residency letter is still incorrect. The last sentence (which you didn't proofread because it didn't have any blanks to fill in) says the purpose of the letter is to apply for a job, not a driver's license. Realize that few people in Preah Vihear have ever taken the test for a driver's license. Snap a photo of an sample residency letter for the PV office to use as a reference.
20. Call the Heavy Truck Training Center, which tells you that you need to come in person to make an appointment for 3-5 days later.
21. Ask friends in Preah Vihear to go back to the office for you Tuesday, get the residency letter corrected, and send it down on a taxi. Since you brought all your ID photos with you, you need your friends to print more ID photos before they go to the office, since the office has already used the five photos you gave them last time. This would be impossible except that you just got ID photos taken last week and the photo place sent you the file for them for the first time in your life. Count it as a minor miracle when the PV office corrects the letter without you physically being there.
22. Meet the taxi driver at an unexpected place Wednesday to get the letter. Go straight to the heavy truck training center. Take an eye exam and book the appointment for the following Monday morning (3 days after you'd planned to leave the city).
23. Wrestle with the unexpected question of whether to take the exam in a standard or automatic transmission car. You learned how to drive a manual back in 2008, and while you got lots of practice that year, you haven't driven one in over a decade. But if you test in an automatic car, your license won't apply to manuals. You've never noticed what's common in Cambodia, so you ask a colleague's advice and go with an automatic.
24. Pay $10 extra when a driver claims your fare without actually picking you up, preventing you from booking another ride home for the next 30 minutes. Argue with the tuk-tuk company for a refund, which they eventually provide, and a credit toward your next trip, which they deny.
25. Learn that the test is very difficult and that you need to study for both the theoretical portion and the driving portion. Your Thursday and Friday are booked solid, so this leaves the weekend, when you thought you could finally rest and have extended time with God.
28. Show up at 8 AM Monday morning. Pass the theory section at 9 on your first try (yesss!) and learn that you need to take the driver's test right afterward, not in the afternoon like you supposed. Realize you won't have time to rent a car from the center and practice like your colleague recommended. Study the driving course diagram.
30. Do the walk of shame, leaving the car mid-course and returning to the building. Exchange sympathetic looks with everyone else who failed. Ask when you can rent a car to practice. Answer: Not today. Only 7-8 AM.
31. Plead with the staff to print your license early if you pass tomorrow. Usually they print it after their lunch break, around 2 or 3, but that would mean you'd have to stay an extra day. Tell them you live 5 hours away and you've already extended your trip four days trying to get this license.
32. Call the taxi driver returning to Preah Vihear. You've really hoped to be on tomorrow's taxi, which leaves at 1 PM, but might go right past the training center 30 minutes later depending which route it takes. The driver agrees to save you a spot but wait until noon tomorrow to hear you confirm if you can ride with him.
33. Put on your last set of clean clothes and eat the rest of the groceries you bought Saturday, the day after you were supposed to leave town. Go to visit former neighbors, which you naively think will be a brief, relaxing visit. It's anything but. Realize how exhausted you are.
35. Endure his scolding whenever you get anything slightly less than perfect. Try to ask clarifying questions. Be patient when his answers are unhelpful.
36. Get kicked out of the car after exactly an hour, when you are starting to get the hang of his instructions but not yet confident you understand them all, let alone will be able to apply them in a testing situation.
37. Wait 2.5 hours in the heat again to retake the driver's test. Recognize several faces from the day before, since most test-takers failed their first and/or second attempt. Rack your brain to write down all the tips he gave you. Realize you have a few blanks in your memory
38. Panic at 10:30 when your name isn't on the list they announce. Run into the building where they tell you you should have signed up and paid $15 by 9 AM for the retake. You plead for mercy, pointing out you've been there waiting since 7 AM. They let you register now, but they don't take cash and the payment app isn't working on your phone inside the building.
39. The staff point you to a green building across the street which they say is a Wing, a business where you can send money or pay bills.
40. The people at the green building tell you it's never been a Wing. They tell you to walk ten minutes down the street. You'd book a tuk-tuk ride, but a) your phone data still isn't working, and b) you know from experience that there's almost no tuk-tuk service this far out of town.
41. Rush back to the testing center, sweaty and sunburnt. They ask in amazement where you've been all this time. "Going to the Wing like you told me." All other test-takers have finished.
42. Pray as you start the test, "Lord, my time is in Your hands." Acknowledge that you have control over very little in life, and that failing the test again is actually not the end of the world.
43. Fail the test again when you start the T-parking too far to the right. Knowing you're probably going to fail, you try to inch forward and turn enough to get into position, but end up knocking over a cone.
44. Endure repeated scolding from the examiner, telling you, "You knocked over a cone!" as if you didn't know that was grounds for failing. Finally interrupt him and tell him, "I know, that's why I'm not arguing." Repeat the walk of shame off the driving course.
45. Endure another lecture from the examiner who helped you that morning, saying you didn't follow his instructions. Actually you tried to... he said not to start too far to the left, but in your conscientiousness about that you started off a bit too far to the right.
46. Be mocked by the parking attendants for failing twice in a row. (Not like it's that uncommon!) They tell you to sign up for driver's school this weekend. Tell them, "I can't stay until the weekend. I have to get back to my job 5 hours away." You know your options are to pass within four tries (by Thursday) or else return to PV without a license or a way to transport students to Saturday's baptism.
47. Stand under the noon sun. Have trouble getting a tuk-tuk once again. Finally get a ride with the guard's friend. Find out ants have infested your packed lunch while your bags were sitting in the guard shack all morning. Load all your stuff back into a tuk-tuk. Consider crying. Try to figure out why you are so very bothered about not being back to PV yet.
48. Return to the office where you're staying. Take a long nap. Ask friends to use their washing machine. Buy a few more groceries. Get a much-needed pep talk from a colleague. Spend time with the colleagues who are flying out that night and leaving you their car.
49. Return to the testing center at 7 AM. Rent a car for another hour. Feel much more confident.
50. Update your notes. Share them with a woman you recognize who sometimes leads worship at your former church. Chat with her for the first time ever. Try to help her pass on her first try, since she doesn't have much margin to spend here.
52. Celebrate when she passes the theory test. Try to encourage the British guy who just failed the theory test for the third time. Tell him, "I know the answers are ridiculous, but if you practice more with the app, you'll start to memorize them."
53. Take the test for the third time. Everything goes flawlessly until the last section, parallel parking.
54. Back up and angle into the spot at a diagonal. Think you hear the sound of tires hitting the curb. This is not an automatic fail, but you're only allowed to pull forward and correct once, so you have basically no chance of success if that's what you just heard.
55. Get flustered and forget what step you're on in the stupid nitpicky method you have to use here, which is not like the common-sense intuitive method your dad taught you. Sit frozen for a moment.
56. Listen to the examiner yell through your window in Khmer, "Great, now turn your wheels hard to the left!" Bless him silently and realize your wheels were never near the curb.
57. Get out and look at your parking job. You needed both your right wheels to be within 25 cm (9.8 inches) of the curb, but you've gotten them more like 5 inches away without a single correction.
58. Stop at the final stop sign and do a victory dance when they tell you you've passed!
59. Call the afternoon taxi driver. He's not driving today so there's no point in rushing home. Decide against trying to drive your colleagues' car from Phnom Penh all the way to Preah Vihear by yourself. Waiting one more day won't kill you.
60. Wait inside the building while the staff prepares your license. Chat with the driving instructor who helped an American guy pass on his first try. Wonder how much kickback she paid for him to pass right away and how much time she's saved him. (He showed up at 10:15, just in time for the driving test, and now she's getting his license for him.)
61. Get your license from the staff within five minutes. They tell the driving instructor, "This girl lives way up in Preah Vihear. She's lived here for 11 years already!" They don't tell her how you failed twice.
62. Walk out with a grin. You have a license for the next ten years.
 |
| Bonus: I can drive tractors up to 3.5 metric tons. |
63. Return to Preah Vihear on Thursday, 15 days after you arrived in the city, six days later than you expected to leave.
64. Load up your teammates' pickup truck with 17 students that Saturday. Drive them 30 minutes away to a waterfall.
65. Park by the waterfall in a field with no curb, much less a 10-inch distance requirement. Hike in and watch eight students be baptized. The joy is infectious.
66. Write down everything you learned along the way, in hopes of saving others a few dozen steps.
