Leaving Vietnam for Cambodia

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Day 28 – Sunday 14th November

We are now 4 weeks into our trip and today begin a two day bus and boat trip to Phnomn Penh in Cambodia. As usual we are the last people to join the bus and get the back seats. No one wants the back seats – every time you hit a bump or hole in the road you fly into the air!! And believe me when I say that the East – West Highway is bumpy! Most of it so far appears to be nothing more than dirt track. According to our guide Winh, there are chicken holes, buffalo holes and elephant holes!

The entire route is lined by shops selling any manner of weird and wonderful goods. From tractors with no wheels, coffins, face masks and sunglasses, fruit and veg, to chickens and ducks (alive of course). Scooters are everywhere - sometimes with as many as five people perched precariously on them. There are ladies in high heels, traders with their scooters piled high with wares, families and children, but it’s the only way to travel.

We arrive in Cai Be at about 11am and we all pile onto a long wooden boat which takes us on a wonderful tour of the Mekong River. It is a glance at real life on the Delta. The people here live and work on the river, and their crops are irrigated by the river. Everything is used in the most efficient way possible and then recycled. We are taken to see rice paper and coconut sweets being made and then onto a restaurant which serves us the most delicious grilled river shrimps. They are huge and the best we have tasted. After a most excellent lunch spent chatting to other backpackers, we are then given bikes – the oldest, creakiest bikes you have ever seen, with absolutely no brakes! Luckily there aren’t many hills around here so we are OK! The boat picks us up and we are taken to Vinh Long where the coach is waiting. We are now on our way to Chau Doc, on the border with Cambodia.

After another 2 and a half hours on the bus, and now tightly crammed in after picking up some extra travellers, we arrive! Where – we haven’t got a clue, but we all get off the bus with our packs and then walk down a muddy path in the dark to an awaiting boat. This boat looks more like a river cruiser and it is adorned with flashing lights. We are told to place all our baggage into the centre of the boat and sit down. It is a nice evening so a few of us decide to go and sit up top to watch the world go by as we sail to our destination – a floating hotel at Chau Doc. As we chug along the Mekong River we realise that every time someone moves, the boat lists to one side or the other! It is really quite scary. Please note that there appear to be no life vests, rings or lifeboats on board, and the tour guide said this morning that there were crocodiles living in the river! Ever wished you were somewhere else?

After another 2 hours on the river, we do finally pull up to our floating hotel – Thank God! The Floating House Villas! Sounds lovely! Even romantic! Believe me when I say that it isn’t. Our room is number 9. The curtains are hanging off the poles, the bed doesn’t have any proper bedding on it, however the shower does work but only scaulding hot or freezing cold – the choice is yours! Oh and one more thing – there’s a cockroach on the floor and you know how much I hate cockroaches! Stuart duly kills it for me but I will probably lie awake all night listening for the rest of the cockroach family to come out and scurry around!

We are so hungry that we decide to go to the restaurant upstairs and see what’s on the menu. We plump for fried rice, some spring rolls and two Tiger beers! After we have paid the bill we have absolutely no dong left at all. In fact we now owe another English couple 40,000 dong (or £1.50 to you and me). Heaven forbid that a Banker should owe someone some money!!! Anyway, after breakfast tomorrow we are off to the Cambodian border and we only need US $22 each for our Visas which we have tucked away, so we should be OK. Roll on tomorrow morning, please!

Morning arrives at precisely 3am, when the whole town seems to come alive, start their boat engines (which sound like Spitfires!) and go off fishing. Then at about 4am the cockerels start crowing! I don’t think that I will be getting anymore sleep so i decide to get up and brush my teeth etc. but find that all the water has been turned off and doesn’t come back on until they start the generator at about 6am!

Breakfast is basic and then we head off in small boats to look at the local fish farm. There are 1000’s of these farms along the banks of the Mekong breeding millions of fish. We see them being fed which is amazing and then get back onto the little boats. We have only gone a few hundred metres when our boat decides to breakdown, so we have to be towed the rest of the way, breathing in the other boats diesel fumes as we go. After a walk through a charming little village where all the people are so friendly and the children wave and want us to take their photos, we are loaded onto the “Fast Boat” to Cambodia. This will be a 3 hour speed boat trip up the Mekong to the border where we will unload and then transfer to a bus to make the last 1 hour journey into Phnomn Penh. This is backpacking at it’s very best. My daughter can no longer call us “Flash Packers”! We are doing the real thing!

I find my mind drifting to thinking about the people that we have spent two days travelling with. Like Ibe and Jan, Canadians from Canloops. He is 73 and she is 69 and between them they have done more backpacking than you can ever imagine! For instance, they backpacked all the way from the tip of South Africa right up to Cairo only using public transport and never knowing where they were going to end up! They also decided to go to China but arrived with no visas – so they found someone who smuggled them into the country in the back of a truck! Currently they are on a 13 month backpacking trip through Asia. They are incredible!

There are a multitude of nationalities on the trip from Saigon to Phnomn Pehn. Brazilians, Spanish, Irish, Canadians, Italians, Austrians, Japanese and Brits of course! And we are only a group of 26!

We now find ourselves pulling over at the border crossing on the Vietnamese side and hand our passports over. It takes about 45 minutes to go through all the formalities, but we eventually get back onto the boat and drive 5 minutes to the Cambodian border where it takes a further hour to get all of our passports and visas approved.

So, how do I feel about Vietnam now that I am leaving? It’s a beautiful country, full of beautiful people. It’s a young, vibrant place full of hope for the future. And I wish them all the luck in the world. It is their time now. There has been enough hardship and suffering. Good luck Vietnam!

Into Cambodia

Everything changes rapidly as we progress up the Mekong River further into Cambodia. The factory type farming on a grand scale that we saw in Vietnam has faded away and we now see small farms with livestock, and a few fisherman plying their trade on the river. The river itself must be 4 kms wide! It makes everything around here so lush and green. And of course there are the temples, ornate and colourful, which appear regularly in small villages along the river bank. I really don’t want to take my eyes off it all for one moment in case I miss something! It is a long and tortuous trip from Saigon to Phnomn Penh, but it is worth every moment!

After about an hour the boat pulls over and we all get off. Our tour guide isn’t very good and just tells us to follow him so we walk up the river bank onto a makeshift stoney road into a village. We end up at a restaurant and are served the most delicious meal of stir fried beef, rice and vegetables. All the local kids seem to appear out of nowhere and they start to make a nuisance of themselves – firstly play fighting with some of the tourists and then begging. They seem to know exactly who to target (luckily not me) and I think that having spent time in India you know how to put your blinkers on and ignore them. Giving money to children just encourages even more begging!

After lunch we are hurried back to the boat to collect our luggage and board the bus that will take us into Phnomn Penh. Once we are moving a little man with a very interesting face tells us all about his hotels and guided tours. He has a captive audience after all, and knows how to play the crowd, finishing his oration with “thank you” in at least 50 different languages! The road is surprisingly good and the houses along it are well built and very attractive. And the traffic is amazingly quiet – a shock to the system after Vietnam with it’s millions of scooters.

We are dropped of near the Central market and then walk a little way. But I am feeling tired and fed up so Stuart hails a motorcycle tuc tuc. US $2 will get us to our hotel (which he assures us that he knows!). It’s obvious once we get going that a he really doesn’t have a clue where the hotel is. Luckily Stuart has the directions on his GPS so he ends up guiding the driver in.

We decide that we really must sit down with a drink and the internet to do some planning for our final 11 days in SE Asia. There is still a lot to see, and if we want to do it all and arrive back in KL in time to get our flight home, some forward planning needs to be done. We work out the dates and book a flight up to Luang Prabang in Laos from Siem Reap. Great. But when we try and book a flight out of Laos to Chang Mai in Thailand we suddenly encounter problems. The payment system won’t let us do it. By now we have tried all of our credit cards and Stuart is getting very agitated. It’s time to get some fresh air and something to eat so we wander up the street and see a nice restaurant on a terrace with what sounds like live music. To get to it we walk through what seems to be a garage for lorries or buses and then climb some very steep narrow steps. Tonight is definitely Karaoke night Khmer fashion. The girls are all dressed up for the occasion and the mike gets handed around the tables to willing victims who seem to love it. Westerners are obviously a bit of a novelty in this restaurant – they can’t speak English, but they are so polite and helpful. We eat what is with out doubt the best meal we have had so far.

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