Hello Cambodia

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Well the "6 hour" bus trip across the border from hcmc to Phnom Penh was one to miss. The bus was old and tired, the traffic was slow and somehow Nina managed to soak the kids passports in overflowed filter water all night.

The border crossing was the weirdest system, passports were collected on the bus, stacked and taken into the customs building... We were told this was the border and to leave our luggage on the bus (no further instructions necessary?). We followed our bus group inside and through security to a series of crowds, vaguely resembling queues. We stood around in the heat for some time waiting for the queues to move, but nothing seemed to be happening, everyone was getting irritated in the hot crowd. Arnee pushed to the front of a queue and asked what was going on,"stand over there" was the response... So we stood.

Eventually we worked out that they were calling out names one by one from each bus. After quite some time they worked through our buses stack and we were cleared to leave Vietnam, to the applause of other passengers who were also waiting.

Back on the bus and down the road to Cambodia customs, where we were scolded and questioned about the now mostly dry passports, that were not looking great after the manhandling at the border check.

It took over an hour but we had successfully changed countries!! Now for the four hour drive to Phnom Penh.

What a great feeling it was to step off our almost 9 hour journey, through the tuk tuk drivers and hand over control to Lou. She organised a driver to her apartment and cold beer, then checked us into a swanky brand new hotel run as a social enterprise with delicious dinner to boot.

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