Goodbye Vietnam

Day 374
After almost a month in Vietnam it was time to go. We have done a lot of things here and it was mostly good. I'm just sick of reading about evil, imperialistic America, plus the people are rather rude. Well, not all of them, but a very high percentage of them, more so than in the other countries I have been to in SE Asia anyway. It's not just towards me because I'm American, no one knows where I'm from until I tell them. I've heard this complaint from a lot of other travelers as well.

On the way to the boat Nicole and I stopped at the post office so she could send some things. When we had booked our boat I was told that while the cyclo driver was getting paid that a tip would be appreciated. When we got to the port I gave my cyclo driver all the small change I had. I don't think that it was even $2, but it seems to have made his day.

We then had to take a very rickety boat to a bigger boat. It was still cool in the morning and there was a nice breeze. The boat ride would have been great, it was just that we were sitting on folding chairs and there wasn't any way that we could fall asleep. I ended up reading for the whole ride. About 3 hours in a guy came on board to collect our passports and money for our visas. He then just got off the boat. As we got further and further from where we had dropped him off we had to tell ourselves that there is no way that he just made off with an entire boatload of people's passports and that we would see them again.

About an hour later we stopped for lunch. Suddenly we were rushed out. Everyone got their passports back but he didn't seem to have ours. Then we realized that they were in his shirt pocket. It took us a few minutes to get them from him. We were then told to take our things off the boat so that they could be inspected. No one else seemed to be doing this. A new boat came and took everyone else on it, we were left standing there along with a French Canadian girl. Soon a woman who spoke better English came along and told us that the other people were on a tour and that there wasn't anymore room on the boat. We would have to wait for about 20 minutes for another one. I was pretty irritated, but it turned out that we got a better boat and arrived at the port at the same time as the people we were with before.

The French Canadian girl (FCG) didn't have enough money for her Cambodian visa. She could have easily gotten money from an ATM the day before in Chow Doc, she just didn't bother. She ended up borrowing money from Nicole and the woman who spoke good English. We spoke with FCG for a bit and found out that she had been traveling for a year and a half and was heading to Bangkok so that she could go home.

The second boat soon came and we got on. Not much later we reached the boarder. Nicole and I had no problems. The FCG, however, didn't have any empty pages in her passport. She would either have to bribe them to put the visa over a couple of stamps from Europe or tear something out that had been glued in. If she tore the page on her passport they wouldn't accept it all. She didn't have any money so she had to tear the page out. This is just stupid. I can't believe that she has been traveling for so long and a. doesn't bring enough money to the boarder, b. doesn't have extra pages in her passport and c. doesn't see why b is so important. She got lucky and the page didn't tear when she took out the glued in bit.

Even though the boat was moving with some speed there wasn't a breeze to be had. Somehow I managed to fall asleep for a few minutes by leaning on the seat in front of me. It was just so uncomfortable and hot, like 4 hours in a sauna. I was greatful when we got to the port and were loaded right onto a minibus. At least we had a breeze this time. An hour later we were in Phnom Phen, the capital of Cambodia.

We quickly got a tuk tuk and checked into our hotel. I wasn't very happy with it though, the beds were right next to each other and I like to have some space. The aircon did work very well though. After showers we headed out for dinner. We had some really yummy pizza that required a very long walk.

Nicole and I wanted to try and do a pub crawl but we found all of the bars to be really dark and scary looking. Eventually we braved one and it turned out to have live music. It was empty though so we bought one drink to split and then moved on. We next went into what we thought was a sports bar but turned out to be a hostess bar. Some bars here have anywhere from a few to up to 40 women (and ladyboys) employed to entertain the customers. When we walked in they brought out some board games to play with us.

We ended up chatting with one of the ladyboys for a bit. She was pretty interesting. Most of the women in SE Asia what to have lighter skin. All the drug stores here carry creams to help with this. The women here will also carry umbrellas every day and cover themselves in long sleeves and even gloves on even the hottest days to hid from the sun. She told us that there is one thing that she does that is a cream that after a few minutes makes it possible to pull off the top layer of skin. Apparently it is just as painful as it sounds. We told her about tanning beds and the things women do in the west just to get a tan. I guess the grass is always greener.

We were only there for one drink and soon moved on to a place on a boat called Pontoon. It was way to loud for me though and we left after a bit.

Floating Away

Day 373
We were up at 5 am. Yuck. We got downstairs just before our guide came to meet us. She found us locked in the hotel trying to figure a way to get out without waking anyone up. She just woke the guy up by banging on the door.

We then followed her down to the docks and into her small boat. The two of us ate in silence while we watched the sun come up over the Mekong. Our first stop was a floating market. This was so much better than the one I had been to in Thailand. Besides a few other boats like ours it was all locals. I wonder how long that will last. Each boat had a rod sticking off of it with various fruits or veggies hanging off of it, advertising what they had on offer. There were big boats with huge selections or just a huge amount of the same thing. Other boats were no bigger than ours and had only a few things to sell. It was so vibrant and bright and wonderful. We spent quite some time just floating through it and taking it all in.

For our next stop we carefully climbed out of the boat onto a slippery dock. We then spent a few minutes checking out a family ran rice noodle making place. Our guide tied a noodle around each of our wrists. They didn't last long though as the noodles quickly hardened and broke off. On the way back to the boat the guide picked some flowers and then arranged them on the boat in an old water bottle. Also on the way back a massively huge bug the size of New Jersey attacked me and I panicked a bit. Our guide thought that this was very funny.

The sun was beginning to get strong and our guide offered me her extra hat. Later on she put up a roof on a boat, I don't know why she didn't just do that in the first place, but I appreciated the hat. We then moved onto the second floating market. This was made up mostly of smaller boats. I think it may have been bigger because of this. It was just as much fun, I just don't want to repeat myself by describing it again.

Next we headed to some of the smaller streams of the Mekong Delta. It was fascinating seeing how people used the river. Lots of kids waved to us. The ramshackle homes were hard to look at though. Then I felt something hit me and jumped. Our guide had made a bug out of a piece of grass and had thrown it at me. She did this periodically throughout the rest of they day. Each time I jumped she laughed harder. I didn't mind, as long as she didn't start throwing real bugs!

It was low tide and soon we had to climb up a scary dock and walk for about an hour to lighten the boats load. The walk was nice and shady. We also got good shots of our crazy guide. As we walked we got a closer look at some home and small villages. The people here have very little but seem to be very happy. Much happier than Westerners who have so much, but always want more. My shopping problem in Hoi An weighed heavily on my mind.

We had been seeing the same few groups throughout the day and thought we might invite the lone American to join us for lunch. Then we realized that he was wearing socks and sandals so we nixed that idea. Before we continued out our guide climbed through some woods to get some pictures for us of pineapples growing. She took some good pictures too! I think that we both fell asleep at some point towards the end of the trip. We just went by house after house along the Mekong.

When we got back we had just enough time to hop in the shower and finish packing before our bus. When we had bought the tickets we had been told that a mini van would take us to the bus station. Instead there were two motorbikes there. I can hardly stand with all the extra things I have now, there is no way I am taking them on a motorbike that already scares me. They didn't argue with me and got us a cab. When we got to the bus we realized that we had been really ripped off on the price of the ticket. It was also packed to the gills. There were even a few people standing in the trunk area. The guy sitting next to me reeked horribly and a man in the row in front of us didn't even try to pretend he wasn't trying to look down our shirts!

Needless to say I was happy to get to Chow Doc. This was the jumping off place to Cambodia. At the bus station we had a ton of motorbike drivers try to take us to town. I wasn't about to get on one so I said I would walk the 2 km's or take a cyclo. They didn't seem to believe me and kept trying to get me on a bike. Eventually I ended up in a cyclo though. On the way I met a guy on a motorbike who had a hotel and offered to sell us tickets to Cambodia. We'll call him Nice Ticket Man (NTM).

He followed us to the hotel. When I went to pay the motorbike and cyclo drivers I asked if they had change and he said yes. I then handed him a 100,000 note, the cost was 30,000. He handed me back change for 50,000 and then tried to get me to pay him the 30,000 out of that. NTM was still there and pointed out his error to him. He gave me a dirty look and handed me the rest of my money. As it turned out we didn't like the hotel we had chosen and ended up moving to the one that NTM had recommended. We also bought slow tickets to Phnom Phen from him, the fast boat was full.

For dinner that night we found a hotel with a restaurant and then stopped for shakes on the way back and did some people watching. I was exhausted though and we had another early day to look forward to so we soon headed back to our hotel and called it a night.