Cambodia does not require proof of onward travel for the eVisa, and Immigration at Bavet rarely asks. But "rarely" is not "never" — here is exactly what an officer can ask a US passport holder for at the Vietnam land border, what counts as proof, and how to have it ready in 30 seconds.
Not as a hard requirement. Cambodia does not ask for proof of onward travel to issue the eVisa, and Immigration at the Bavet land border rarely requests it from US passport holders. But an officer is permitted to ask, so carry something simple you can show in seconds: the bus ticket that brought you to the border, a booked onward bus or flight out of Cambodia, or a refundable onward flight reservation. The document that genuinely matters is your approved Cambodia eVisa — $80 USD all-in, approved in 3 business days, delivered as a printable PDF. Bring two printed color copies of the eVisa, keep any onward proof as an offline screenshot, and you will clear Bavet without drama.
Here is the honest version up front: proof of onward travel is not a formal requirement to enter Cambodia, and at the Bavet land border from Vietnam, Cambodian Immigration almost never asks US citizens to produce it. The eVisa in your hand is what clears you. In years of tracking this crossing, the number of Americans actually turned away for lack of an onward ticket is effectively zero — the far more common problem is travelers who skipped the eVisa and gambled on visa on arrival.
But "almost never" is not "never," and the people who get caught out are the ones who treat the rare request as impossible. An Immigration officer at any land border is permitted to ask how long you intend to stay and where you go next. If you cannot answer cleanly, you create friction at a desk where you would rather have none. The fix is trivial — have one simple thing ready to show — which is exactly what this guide covers.
This sits inside the bigger picture of crossing overland from Vietnam. If you have not mapped the journey yet, our Bavet border crossing guide for US citizens walks the full Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh route, and the Cambodia and Vietnam visa combo guide covers sequencing both visas for one trip. This article zooms in on one narrow question: the onward-travel piece, and how a US passport holder makes it a non-issue.
Proof of onward travel is a concept that crosses over from air travel, where airlines — not governments — enforce it most aggressively. A carrier that boards a passenger with no way to leave the destination country can be fined and forced to fly that person home at its own cost, so check-in agents sometimes demand an onward or return ticket before they let you on a plane. That airline-level pressure is where most of the anxiety around onward travel comes from.
At a land border, that airline dynamic disappears. There is no carrier liable for flying you home, no check-in agent with a fine hanging over them. The bus operator that brought you to Bavet has no stake in whether you can leave Cambodia. So the entire pressure point that makes onward proof matter at airports is simply absent on the overland route from Vietnam. This is the core reason the request is so rare at Bavet.
What remains is the immigration officer’s own discretion. Border officers everywhere have the standing authority to satisfy themselves that you are a genuine short-stay visitor, not someone planning to overstay or work illegally. Asking about your onward plans is one tool for that. In Cambodia it is used lightly — the country runs on tourism and makes entry deliberately easy — but the authority exists, and a US traveler who can answer the question confidently never triggers a second look.
It is worth separating two things people lump together: proof of onward travel and proof of funds. They are different questions, and Cambodia is relaxed on both at the eVisa stage. Our note on onward ticket and proof of funds for US citizens covers the money side; this guide stays on the onward-ticket side, which is the one that actually comes up at a land desk.
If an officer at Bavet does ask, the bar is low. They want a plausible answer to "how long, and what next" — not a forensic itinerary. Here is what works, roughly in order of how easy it is to produce on the spot.
Notice what is not on the list: you do not need a printed dossier, an agency letter, a tour voucher, or a balance statement. A single screenshot on your phone covers the realistic worst case. And because the request is so rare overland, most Americans never get past showing the eVisa and passport at all.
Onward travel is the edge case. The thing that genuinely decides whether you walk through Bavet is your approved Cambodia eVisa. Without it you are at the mercy of the visa-on-arrival booth, which has a long, documented habit of running out of physical visa stickers at exactly the wrong moment. An approved eVisa removes that variable entirely — you arrive already approved, with a printable PDF in hand.
The Tourist eVisa is $80 USD all-in, approved in 3 business days, and delivered as a printable PDF by email. No flight booking required to apply, no hotel reservation, no bank statement. If your trip is business rather than leisure, the Business eVisa is $90 USD all-in on the same 3-business-day timeline. Apply before you leave the United States, or at minimum a week before your Saigon departure, so the approval is sitting in your inbox long before you board the bus — you can apply for either in a few minutes.
Print two color copies of the eVisa PDF on standard letter or A4 paper. One you hand to the officer at the Bavet desk; one stays in your bag as a backup. The officer scans the QR code, but the printed page is the working document at a land border — a phone screen is not reliably accepted overland, which is the opposite of how a Cambodian airport handles it. Your US passport needs at least six months of validity from the crossing date and one full blank page for the entry stamp.
The goal is to make the whole question a non-event. If an officer ever asks, you want to surface a single clear screen without fumbling through email, and without depending on the border wifi, which is patchy to nonexistent. A little prep on the bus, before you reach the desk, does it.
Lodge the Tourist eVisa at $80 USD all-in (Business $90), approved in 3 business days and delivered as a printable PDF by email.
A land border works off the printed page, so carry two A4 or letter copies plus a US passport with 6+ months validity and a blank page.
Save the inbound bus ticket, or a booked onward flight or return bus, to your phone gallery so it shows offline.
No fixed plan? Book a fully refundable onward flight or a 24-hour airline hold, screenshot it, then cancel later at no cost.
Keep $50 to $100 in clean, undamaged, post-2006 bills; no proof-of-funds paperwork is needed at the eVisa stage.
Hand over a printed eVisa and passport; if the rare onward question comes, surface your one pinned screenshot.
Take a screenshot of your strongest piece of proof and save it to your phone’s photo gallery, not just your inbox. The inbound Mekong Express or Giant Ibis ticket is the obvious choice — it is already on your phone and it tells the whole story of a normal short trip. If you have a booked onward flight or return bus, screenshot that too. Put both in a dedicated album or pin them to the front of your camera roll so they are one tap from the lock screen.
If you have no fixed onward plan and want the safest backstop, book a fully refundable onward flight before you leave the United States, screenshot the confirmation, and cancel it within the refund window once you are inside Cambodia. A 24-hour airline hold does the same job for free. This is a common, entirely legitimate move for open-ended Indochina trips, and it gives you a real booking reference rather than an improvised story.
A few situations change the calculus slightly, and they are worth a moment before you go.
If your route loops back into Vietnam after Cambodia — for example, flying home out of Hanoi — the onward-proof question quietly becomes a Vietnam re-entry question, and that one has teeth. A single-entry Vietnam e-Visa is spent the moment you cross into Cambodia at Bavet. To return, you need a multi-entry Vietnam e-Visa bought up front, before you leave the United States. On the Cambodia side, remember the eVisa you used to enter at Bavet is single entry too: leave Cambodia and come back, and that is a fresh eVisa.
For families, each traveler — including children and infants — needs their own Cambodia eVisa and their own passport. There is no shared family application. If an officer asks any onward-travel question of a family group, one screenshot covering the whole party (a return bus or a flight with everyone’s names) is enough; you do not need a separate proof per person.
Finally, do not confuse onward travel proof with the e-Arrival Card — two different things travelers regularly mix up. The e-Arrival Card is mandatory for air arrivals into Cambodia and does not apply at land borders at all. At Bavet, there is no card to file and nothing extra to buy for entry. Our explainer on the e-Arrival Card at land borders versus air spells out exactly where the line falls, so you do not pay for a step the land crossing does not use.
Saigon is the launchpad. Buy multi-entry if you plan to return.
See the combo guide →Your destination — approved PDF in hand before the bus leaves Saigon.
Start your eVisa →Fly in is fine. Overland into Cambodia is not, since June 2025.
Check the entry rules →If you are crossing in the next few weeks, a five-minute read of the State Department’s Cambodia and Vietnam pages is worth it for the current safety and entry picture, especially during the wet season (May to October) when flooding can slow Highway 1. But the onward-travel part of your prep is small: one screenshot, kept offline. The big rock is the eVisa, and the Cambodia and Vietnam visa combo guide ties the whole two-country sequence together if you are still planning.
Quick pre-crossing checklist: approved Cambodia eVisa printed in two color copies; US passport with 6+ months validity and a blank page; one offline screenshot of onward proof (inbound bus ticket or a booked onward flight); $50 to $100 USD in clean small bills; and, if you are looping back into Vietnam, a multi-entry Vietnam e-Visa bought before you flew. No e-Arrival Card, no proof-of-funds paperwork, no dossier.
Next steps and related reading for US travelers: apply for your Cambodia eVisa when you are ready to lodge, bookmark our Cambodia visa hub for United States citizens as the single canonical reference, read the Bavet border crossing guide for the full overland route, and skim the onward ticket and proof of funds note for the money side of arrival.
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Se il tuo viaggio in Cambogia supera i 30 giorni, il visto con cui entri decide tutto. L'eVisa Turistica (Tipo T) ha un limite massimo di 30 giorni senza possibilità di estensione. L'eVisa Business (Tipo E) è l'unica categoria che puoi estendere in loco — 1, 3, 6 o 12 mesi. Ecco come gli americani scelgono correttamente prima di partire.
Three things cross the counter at Cambodia Immigration: your US passport, your eVisa, and your e-Arrival QR code. Here is exactly what the officer wants to see, in what order, and the small mismatches that turn a 30-second stamp into a side-desk detour at KTI.
With every Thailand–Cambodia land border still closed, Bavet is now the main overland way into Cambodia from Vietnam. Six hours from Ho Chi Minh City, one printed eVisa, no e-Arrival Card — here is how US citizens actually do it in 2026.
One more habit worth building: carry a thin USD cash buffer — say $50 to $100 in clean, undamaged, post-2006 bills — because Cambodia runs on US dollars at the small-vendor level, and a relaxed traveler who can clearly fund a short stay never reads as a risk. For the rest of the desk-by-desk choreography at the crossing, the Bavet eVisa walkthrough for Americans is the detailed companion to this note.
