We got Blocked From Entering Thailand
And How to Photograph a Thai Funeral
Stuck in Cambodia
This is the story of how we got stuck in a foreign country and couldn’t get home.
It began three days before we were scheduled to fly from Bangkok to Vancouver to conclude close to two years of world travel. We were on our way to take photos at a Chinese Temple in Chinese costumes when we received a call that Yuki’s grandmother had a seizure and was being rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. She was kept in the intensive care unit (ICU).
Yuki’s grandmother hasn’t been doing very well for a long time now and is one of the reasons we changed our plans last year and came to Thailand after the Philippines for Chinese New Years. It wasn’t a huge surprise, but it was nonetheless rough on the family.
In terms of our travel plans, it put us in a difficult position. We were supposed to fly home in two days and we’d been in the country for 25 of the 30 days allowed by the visa exemption.
The next day, we made the decision to spend $260 CAD to change flights, which would give us another 14 days with the family. That brought us to the next problem of how to extend our time in country, since our visa exemption was about to run out.
There were two options: the first was to fly Kuala Lumpur and back just to leave and re-enter the country, which would kickstart a new visa-exempt allowance. This would cost another $260 CAD or so. The second option was to do a visa run to Cambodia.
Historically, it was common to find foreigners in Thailand who didn’t want to leave. Usually they were the hippy backpacker type with not a lot of spending money, who had found a reasonably safe and secure low-cost country to park themselves in and just “chill”. The problem was that visa exemptions only last 30 days, so if you wanted to stay longer in Thailand but had no good reason, you would have to leave and comeback. The easiest and cheapest way for us was to take a day trip to Cambodia and return by the end of the day. We decided that this would be the most cost and time effective, as the Cambodian border is only a three hour drive from Bangkok.
We had no trouble leaving Thailand and entering Cambodia at Poi Pet crossing.
Unfortunately, as we were heading back to Thailand, we got a call that Yuki’s grandmother had stopped breathing and the hospital was feeding her oxygen. At the same time, the officials at the border detained us under the demand that a same-day return to Thailand was not possible. Despite having Yuki’s cousin’s reassurances, Yuki speaking Thai to the officials, and evidence (including potential documentation) that their grandmother was in ICU, the official would not let us back into the country. If we wanted to return to Thailand, we were told to drive to Siam Reap and get a flight back, which would guarantee us re-entry on the same day.
We retreated to the no-man’s zone and talked to the Cambodians, who said that the Thais like to tell people to come back the next day and not let them in again. Fortunately Yuki’s cousin had a data plan on her phone and was able to look up flights for that day. We don’t know how foreigners who don’t speak the language would understand being barred from entering, let alone being told that coming back the next day may not work and that they should get themselves to Siam Reap (a three-hour trip) and somehow find a flight back to Bangkok.
But that’s what we had to do. We found a flight online and booked it right then and there. Then we talked to the Cambodians loitering around the border and got a driver who would take us to the airport. Yuki was worried he’d harm us or take advantage of us in some way, but he was just very nervous and wanting to pick up other passengers along the way to make more money. In the end, it took 2.5hrs to drive to the airport and we were incredibly relieved to get our boarding passes.
We got a bite to eat while waiting our 45 minute flight, the last of the day to Bangkok. Sadly, right before we boarded our flight, we received a call that Yuki’s grandmother passed away. Had the border official let us back into the country, we would have seen her once more, but the new crackdown didn’t let that happen. Instead, we arrived home too late.
How to Photograph A Thai Funeral
The next few days went by fast, as we made preparations for and attended the funeral. I was asked to be the funeral’s photographer. In Thailand funerals are documented in detail, not unlike a wedding.
The funeral was held over three consecutive days. More religious or wealthier people have them for 5 or 7 days. On the first day after the death, we arranged for the Wat (temple) to pick up the body from the hospital and then set up the funeral service for the evening.
There was a short ceremony with the family to pay respects to the body before the casket was closed, and then later a second ceremony with friends and family, chanting monks, and pouring of sacred water.
I was told there was no wrong time to take photos, which was weird to me because I wasn’t sure what would be appropriate during a religious affair. In addition, I felt obligated to take part in the Buddhist prayers while the monks chanted, even if I didn’t understand the language. I was, however, instructed to circulate around and capture everything.
The next two days of ceremonies were the same as the first. We spent the late afternoon and evening at the Wat socializing with friends and family that came, serving them food and water before everyone gathered in the hall to pray with the chanting monks. That part of the ceremony was the same on each day, which was good for allowing people to come on one day if they couldn’t on the others, but also created a weird sensation in that it was like saying goodbye but then coming back the next day to say goodbye all over again. Each day we went to the Wat early to greet guests and there was also a hired caterer who served different types of soup. At the end of each day’s events, we would give away snack boxes to the guests to take home with them, which took organization during the day.
On the fourth day, we went to the Wat early in the morning for one of the last funeral ceremonies. This time Malika’s son Jack, our nephew, shaved his head and dressed as a monk for the day to help send the grandmother on. There was a prayer session with 10 other monks, then we watched the monks eat. We later came back in the evening for the sixth ceremony, which was the actual cremation.
The fifth day was the final day, but it was also the longest. We had a short prayer with the remains and then drove them out to the countryside, where the family is originally from. Two hours outside of Bangkok, there is another Wat where we had the seventh prayer session and second time watching monks eat. After everyone else had eaten the leftovers, we finally put the remains to rest in a pagoda tomb with her husband.
Photographing a Thai funeral is probably one of the more awkward things I’ve done on this trip. The whole affair was pretty casual, with people dressed in jeans and black outfits, some chatting or answering phone calls during the prayers, but it was nonetheless odd to be documenting the entire process through the eye of a camera. It wasn’t the kind of event I would expect to have a photographer for, and I didn’t want to appear offensive or do the wrong thing.
