Cambodia eVisa System Down — What Australians Should Do (2026)
Sometimes the Cambodian eVisa portal — or our checkout — just will not load. Most of the time it is a brief outage at the Phnom Penh end, sometimes it is your bank or network blocking us, and very occasionally it is genuinely broken. Here is how to tell which, and what to do if your flight is 48 hours out.
The Cambodia eVisa system is down — what should I do as an Australian?
First, confirm it is actually an outage and not a bank decline or a local network block — the symptoms are different and so are the fixes. If the Cambodian eVisa portal itself is down, wait it out: most Phnom Penh-end outages last 30-90 minutes and cluster in the KH-evening window (Aussie late night), weekends, and the first weekend of the month for scheduled maintenance. Through us, your eVisa is approved in 3 business days and delivered as a printable PDF by email once submission succeeds — if our checkout is the unreachable side, reload after 5 minutes; the engineering team in Sydney gets a Slack alert inside 90 seconds. Whatever you do, do not try to submit twice when systems flake — a duplicate fee on a single passport gets both files voided.
Key Takeaways
- Cambodian eVisa portal outages cluster in three windows — KH evenings (Aussie late night), weekends, and the first weekend of the month for scheduled maintenance.
- An outage looks different from a bank or network block — outage = white page or timeout, bank block = error code mentioning your card, network block = page loads everywhere except your wifi.
- Don't submit twice when systems flake. A duplicate fee on a single passport gets both files voided by Cambodian Immigration and the refund is slow.
- If your flight is in 48 hours and you still cannot apply, the visa-on-arrival fallback works at KTI, SAI, and KOS for $30 USD (~$45 AUD) in cash — only at those three airports.
- Through us, an outage on our checkout triggers a Slack alert in the Sydney office within 90 seconds — Aussie-timezone support replies on the same channel.
Why this matters in 2026
A Cambodian eVisa portal that will not load at 11pm Sydney time on a Sunday is one of those small problems that feels enormous in the moment. You have probably already packed the carry-on, you have probably already shown your partner the flight details, and the visa page is the last thing standing between you and feeling sorted for the trip. Then the page returns a timeout and your brain leaps to the worst-case interpretation immediately.
The reality is that almost every outage Aussies hit on the Cambodian eVisa system is short, predictable, and self-resolving. The Phnom Penh-side eVisa unit runs maintenance windows on Khmer-evening hours and the first weekend of the month, and KH-evening is Aussie late night — so an Aussie hitting submit at 11pm Sydney on a Sunday is hitting the portal at exactly the worst moment in the Khmer week. The fix is almost always to wait 30-90 minutes and try again, but knowing which type of outage you have changes what you do in the meantime.
This guide walks through the three failure modes (Phnom Penh outage, your bank or card blocking us, your home network blocking us), how to tell them apart in 60 seconds, what to do for each, and the visa-on-arrival fallback if you are inside the 48-hour window with no working portal. The Cambodia visa processing time from Australia overview has the standard timeline context if you want to plan around the usual windows. For the umbrella view across cost, processing time, and documents, see the Cambodia eVisa for Australian travellers hub.
Outage, card block, or network block — how to tell which in 60 seconds
The single most useful thing to know is that 'the system is down' usually means one of three very different things, and they have different fixes. Five seconds of diagnosis up front saves hours of frustration. The trick is in reading the symptom precisely.
Symptom 1 — white page, infinite spinner, or timeout
If the page never loads at all — a white background, an endless loading spinner, a browser timeout, or 'this site cannot be reached' — that is almost always a portal outage on the Cambodian end. The portal is unreachable, no payment has been attempted, and nothing has touched your card. The fix is to wait. Try again in 30 minutes, then in an hour, then in three hours. Set a quiet timer rather than refreshing every 60 seconds.
Symptom 2 — an error code mentioning your card or bank
If you get to the checkout, fill in card details, hit pay, and see an error referencing your card or bank — 'declined', 'do not honour', '3D Secure failed', 'CVV mismatch' — that is your bank, not the portal. The portal is up, your application is sitting on the server waiting for a successful payment, and the issue is between your card and the merchant. The fix is to retry with the card unblocked (a quick call to your bank usually does it), or to use a second card. The Cambodia eVisa card-decline troubleshooter for Aussies walks through what each error code means.
Bank blocks are common enough that we see them most days — Aussie banks sometimes flag a USD charge from a Cambodian merchant gateway as suspicious, especially if your card has not been used internationally in the last 12 months. The fix is a 3-minute call to your bank to authorise the charge.
Symptom 3 — page loads everywhere except on your wifi
If the portal loads fine on your phone with mobile data but not on your home wifi (or vice versa), the issue is your local network. Some Aussie ISPs and some corporate VPNs route certain Cambodian government IPs through aggressive filters and the portal ends up blocked at the network layer. The fix is to switch networks. Turn wifi off on the phone and try on 4G, or hotspot the laptop off your phone, or try a different wifi network like a cafe.
When Phnom Penh-end outages typically happen
Cambodian eVisa portal outages are not random — they cluster in three predictable windows. Knowing the patterns means you can plan your submission to avoid the worst moments, and it means a portal that is down at 11pm Sydney on a Sunday is almost certainly going to be back up by 1am Sydney time without you doing anything.
First — the KH-evening window. Phnom Penh business hours run roughly 8am-5pm Khmer time, which is 11am-8pm Sydney time. The portal gets a lot less attention from operations staff outside those hours, and any minor glitch that would be caught and fixed inside Khmer business hours can sit unresolved for an hour or two in the KH-evening. KH-evening is around 9pm-1am Sydney time, which is exactly when many Aussies first sit down to do the visa after the kids are in bed.
Second — weekends. Cambodian Immigration's eVisa unit does not process files on Saturday or Sunday, and the portal infrastructure receives lighter monitoring on weekends too. Most weekend outages are short, but the response time on anything genuinely broken can stretch into Monday morning Khmer time, which is Monday afternoon Sydney time.
Third — the first weekend of each month. Scheduled maintenance runs in the first Sunday-evening Khmer time window of every month, which lands on Monday morning Sydney time. This is the only outage that is genuinely planned and announced — but the announcement is in Khmer on the eVisa portal banner and most Aussies miss it. Plan around it by submitting earlier in the week or earlier in the day.
The best Aussie-clock window to apply
If you have flexibility, the safest window from Australia is Tuesday-Thursday between 1pm-7pm Sydney time. That is mid-Khmer-business-day, the portal is most stable, the MFAIC eVisa unit is actively processing, and any issue gets attention inside the same business day.
How to confirm the portal is actually down (and not just your end)
Before you assume the portal is broken globally, do the 60-second outage diagnostic. It is short, it rules out the most common false positives, and it saves the rest of your evening.
- Step 1: try the page on a second device — open it on your phone using mobile data (with wifi off). If it loads on the phone, the issue is your home wifi or laptop, not the portal.
- Step 2: try a different browser or incognito window on the same device. Browser cache and extensions cause a surprising share of 'system down' reports — incognito clears both.
- Step 3: check downdetector for the Cambodian government domains, or check our public status page. If it shows widespread reports, the outage is real and broader than you.
- Step 4: ask in a relevant Aussie travel Facebook group. If three other people in the comments are also seeing it, it is a portal outage. If nobody else is having an issue, it is something on your end.
- Step 5: through us, reply on your confirmation thread or contact support — Aussie-timezone monitoring catches most things within 90 seconds and can tell you immediately whether it is a portal-side or our-side issue.
The reason the diagnostic matters is that 'wait it out' and 'fix your end' are very different things, and doing the wrong one for an hour is what turns a small annoyance into a bad evening. If your laptop is the problem and you wait two hours, the portal was up the whole time. If the portal is the problem and you spend two hours reinstalling Chrome, nothing improves. The Cambodia eVisa rush options and myths piece for Australians covers what a real same-day visa actually looks like if you do hit a portal problem at a tight moment.
If your flight is 48 hours out and the portal is still unreachable
This is the situation everyone is really worried about — the portal is down, the clock is ticking, and the flight is locked in. The honest answer is that genuine 48-hour portal outages that prevent eVisa submission are rare; most Aussies who think they are in this situation are actually in the 'wait 30 more minutes' situation. But if you have done the diagnostic and the portal is genuinely unreachable from multiple networks and downdetector confirms it, there is a fallback path that is built precisely for this scenario.
Cambodia maintains a visa-on-arrival counter at three international airports — KTI (Phnom Penh, Techo International, which replaced PNH on 9 September 2025), SAI (Siem Reap), and KOS (Sihanoukville). The visa-on-arrival is $30 USD (~$45 AUD) in cash at the counter, processed in the immigration hall after you land, valid for 30 days single entry. It is not available at any land border (and in 2026 all 7 Thailand-Cambodia land borders are closed anyway), and it is not available at smaller airports.
The visa-on-arrival is a genuine fallback rather than a primary route. Cash USD only — Aussie debit cards do not work at the counter. The queues can run 30-90 minutes after a wide-body lands. Australian airlines (Qantas, Singapore Airlines) sometimes ask for proof of onward travel and proof of eligibility for visa-on-arrival at the Sydney or Melbourne gate before letting you board, so carry the printed flight return and a screenshot of the Cambodian government VOA eligibility page on your phone.
Don't try to apply twice while waiting
If the portal eventually comes back up and you have not paid for a visa-on-arrival yet, apply once. If you have already submitted on the portal earlier in the day, do not submit a second time. The duplicate-fee rule applies regardless of whether systems were flaky in between — a single passport in MFAIC's queue twice gets both files voided.
The Cambodia visa-on-arrival 2026 guide for Australians has the full counter walkthrough for KTI, SAI, and KOS — what to carry, how much USD cash to bring, how the photo step works at the counter, and what the typical immigration-hall wait looks like.
When our checkout is the unreachable side
Occasionally — usually after a deployment or a third-party-service hiccup — our checkout is the side that is unreachable rather than the Cambodian portal. We monitor for this aggressively. The Sydney reliability team gets a Slack alert inside 90 seconds of any checkout error rate above baseline, on-call rotates by Aussie business hours, and an outage on our end usually has a status banner up on the apply page within 5 minutes telling you exactly what is happening.
If our checkout is down and you have already filled in the form, the safest move is to close the browser tab without paying and come back in 10 minutes — your form details auto-save and you will not lose them. Do not open a second tab and try to submit again from there. If our checkout is fully unreachable for more than 30 minutes, reply on the confirmation email if you got one or contact support — Aussie-timezone responders can either confirm the issue is resolved or queue your application manually.
Across the entire stack — portal up, checkout up, card going through — the typical submission completes in under 4 minutes. If you are past 10 minutes and nothing has loaded, that is the right moment to stop refreshing and start diagnosing.
Thailand
All 7 land borders to Cambodia closed since June 2025; fly via KTI/SAI/KOS
No overland fallback in 2026 — air is the only legal route.
Read the 2026 update →Vietnam
Bavet land crossing open; eVisa pair works smoothly
A working overland option through Moc Bai / Bavet.
See the combo guide →Laos
Tropaeng Kreal crossing reliable for overland
Indochina loop completes here without portal drama.
Plan the Laos route →Singapore
Visa-free 90 days
The smoothest stopover on the way to Phnom Penh.
Sort the stopover →Indonesia (Bali)
e-VOA $35 + Bali tourism levy
Bali or Cambodia for your next trip — or both.
Compare the two →Putting it together for Aussie travellers
A Cambodia eVisa portal that will not load is almost never an emergency. The Phnom Penh-side outage windows are predictable, most last under 90 minutes, the bank-and-network failure modes are quick to diagnose, and the visa-on-arrival fallback at KTI, SAI, and KOS exists precisely for the rare cases where you genuinely cannot get the eVisa submitted before flight. The single trap to avoid is the double-submission — wait it out, diagnose first, fix the right thing once. The Do Australians need a visa for Cambodia explainer covers the upstream eligibility picture if you want the wider context.
Next steps and related reading for Australians: apply for your Cambodia eVisa when you are ready to lodge, bookmark our Cambodia visa hub for Australian citizens as the single canonical reference, skim the FAQ on Cambodia visa eligibility for quick answers, and use our glossary of Cambodia visa terms to decode any acronym in this guide.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a Cambodia eVisa portal outage usually last?
Most Phnom Penh-end outages last 30-90 minutes and self-resolve once the local operations team catches them. Scheduled maintenance on the first Sunday-evening Khmer time of each month can run 2-4 hours. If a portal is unreachable for longer than 4 hours, that is genuinely unusual and worth checking downdetector or asking in an Aussie travel group to confirm the scope.
Can I tell if it is the Cambodia eVisa portal that is down, or my end?
Yes — the 60-second test is to try the page on your phone over mobile data with home wifi switched off. If the page loads on mobile data, the issue is your wifi or laptop. If it does not load anywhere, the portal itself is likely down. Cross-check on downdetector or our public status page to confirm scope.
What if my card keeps getting declined on the Cambodia eVisa checkout?
That is a bank issue, not a portal issue. Aussie banks sometimes flag a USD charge from a Cambodian merchant gateway as suspicious, especially on first international use of a card. The fix is a 3-minute call to your bank to authorise the charge, then retry. If a second card on a different bank also declines, that is worth flagging on support — Aussie-timezone responders can tell you whether the issue is broader.
Should I submit twice if the system flakes on the first attempt?
No. A single passport submitted to MFAIC twice gets both files voided by Cambodian Immigration, and the second fee on your card has a slow refund path. If the first submission completed and you have a confirmation email, the application is in the queue — wait for it. If the first submission never completed and you have no confirmation, you can safely retry once the portal is back up.
My flight is in 48 hours and I cannot apply — what do I do?
If the portal genuinely cannot be reached after diagnostic, the visa-on-arrival counter at KTI, SAI, or KOS is your fallback — $30 USD (~$45 AUD) cash, processed at the airport after you land, 30-day single entry, available at those three airports only. Carry proof of return flight and a screenshot of the Cambodian government VOA eligibility page on your phone for the Aussie gate agents at Sydney or Melbourne.
Why does the portal seem to fail more on Sunday nights from Sydney?
Because Sunday evening Sydney time is late evening Khmer time on a Sunday — outside Cambodian business hours and immediately before the first-weekend-of-month maintenance window. Phnom Penh operations staff have lighter coverage at that hour, so any minor glitch sits unresolved longer than it would in the Khmer business day. The fix is to apply Tuesday-Thursday between 1pm-7pm Sydney time when possible.
Does an outage reset the 3-business-day Cambodia eVisa clock?
No. The 3-business-day clock starts the moment your complete file lands in MFAIC's queue with payment confirmed. An outage before submission means the clock has not started yet. An outage after successful submission does not affect the clock — your file is already in the queue. Through us, the approved PDF is delivered as a printable PDF by email once the clock completes.
How will I know if the issue is on your side and not the Cambodian portal?
A banner appears on the apply page within 5 minutes of any genuine our-side issue, and the Sydney reliability team gets a Slack alert inside 90 seconds. If you reply on the confirmation email thread, Aussie-timezone support can tell you immediately whether the issue is our checkout or the upstream Cambodian portal — and what the expected resolution time is.
Sources
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