Off to Vietnam!

We left Sihanoukville towards Phnom Penh the next day in the afternoon. We spent the night in Phnom Penh and took a speed boat on the river to Vietnam. The weather was great and we sat on the deck enjoying the view and the weather for most of the ride to the Cambodian border.

All along the river banks there are villages and houses and little wooden boats used to transport the people and their goods. The river itself is probably not the cleanest - at least not as far as can be determined from its colour.

Crossing the border into Vietnam the boat stops on the Cambodian side, everyone gets out and gets an exit stamp in their passport. Then you get back in the boat and 100 meters further, you dock again and hand-in your passport to the Vietnamese immigration officer. We had to wait there for a bit for all the passports and visas to be checked, and then got back in the boat and off we went, as soon as the driver had exchanged the Cambodian flag for the Vietnamese one.

Funnily, as soon as we entered Vietnam it started pouring and our deck-chilling session was brought to an abrupt end. The boat ride to Chau Doc took another two hours from the border and the similar scenes as those in Cambodia could be seen by the river. I did find, however, that the houses seemed less sturdily built in Vietnam and that somehow it seemed poorer.

When we arrived in Chau Doc we were met by our guide and he took us to our hotel. We then went to find food and ended up eating Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup - usually with beef) at a street stand in the centre. Chau Doc, is not a very big place - actually it's quite small, so there really was not much to see or do there. After having our dinner, we wandered through the market for a while and then went to sit in the local bia (beer) place next to our hotel. We had a few beers and played cards and eventually went to bed.

We ended up paying the equivalent of 6 Euros for two meals, a pack of cigarettes, two packets of crisps and nine beers. Quite a bargain, we thought. Obviously these prices cannot be expected of the cities and places frequented more regularly by tourists.