July 4, 2008 Traveling from Kampot, Cambodia to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Sooo here goes the day from hell. The day started out for us at around 5:30 am where we woke up and got ready for a long day of travel. Angy usually takes a while to get ready so I got myself packed and brought my bag up front to order some food and reconcile the bill. Angy eventually came out and we ate some breakfast.
After that we said goodbye to our friendly hotel guy who let us know that we didn’t have to go all the way back to Phnom Penh to get across the border into Vietnam. Instead he hooked us up with a taxi to a different border crossing in the southern part of Cambodia. It was only 1.5 hours to the border and from the border it was 6 hours to Ho Chi Minh
(Also known as Saigon).
That sounded a lot better than 3 hours to Phnom Penh and then 8 hours to Saigon. Well, you all know the saying. If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. This was a prime example.
So we hop into our Toyota taxi with our non-English speaking driver and head off to the Cambodia/Vietnam border. The beginning of the ride was pretty smooth and uneventful. Much of it we had already driven on with the mopeds. But after that it turned into some pretty bad roads for a while. It was a dirt road about a car and a half wide, that was full, of huge potholes. We seemed to be in a very rural area. Mainly a farming community that didn’t seem to have electricity or running water.
Everyone who was walking, biking, riding a moped, or riding a cow was staring at us inside the car. I’ve discovered that I’m not a big fan of being stared at. We eventually made it to better roads and we were able to speed up a little bit. At one point we had to try to communicate with the driver and try to tell him that Angy had to pee really bad. We finally came to an understanding and he just pulled over somewhere along the road between the houses and farms and pointed to a spot back in the woods a little but for Angy. Ahhh relief for Angy.
Finally we make it to the border, except it took us at least an hour longer than we expected. No big deal, at least we made it to the border. The roads that we had been driving on to get there had Angy and I wondering if we were going the right way. Things got pretty rural looking for a while.
We paid our driver and went off in the direction of the border. It was pretty obvious the direction we had to take. But the area that we had to go to check in with immigration wasn’t so obvious. So I figured that we will just keep walking until someone yells at us too stop. The plan worked well, eventually someone told us to stop, and we did. The whole process of checking in with Cambodian immigration went smooth. So did the immigration for checking into Vietnam.
It was actually kind of interesting. They had a big nice x-ray machine for big bags, and the guy told us to set them on the conveyor. So we did, I made sure to pull out the laptop. He ended not even turning the machine on, instead I just picked up the bags and set them on the other side of the x-ray machine. The border patrol guy didn’t speak or read English so he kept having to look at the Vietnamese instructions on the other side of our immigration cards to make sure we were filling them our correctly.
Then he had me walk over and open our bags and start pulling out our stuff for him to look at. He really wasn’t looking for anything; I really think that he just wanted to look at what we had. He opened our folder with all our documents and was looking at it like he could read it. Pretty funny. I didn’t really care too much I thought the whole thing was kind of amusing. The guy was really nice about everything.
From there we had to go to the quarantine area. All we had to do to get quarantined was that we paid $1 US for the two of and we received receipts. No problems so far. I was feeling ok at this point, everything had gone without a hitch.
Now this is where everything went to shit. I’m talking about a big stinky shit too.
It turns out that this border crossing rarely gets used by foreigners, and when they do the local moped mafia is prepared to scam your ass. Sure there is a bus from Tinh Bien to Chau Doc. But that is only if the bus driver will let you on. You might ask, why wouldn’t the bus drivers want us to ride the bus? Well, let’s just say that the moped mafia gang hangs out right next to the buses and I can only assume that if the bus driver let’s us on he would get in some sort of trouble with those dirt bags. But hey, I guess everyone has to make a living somehow, right? Right!? I don’t know about that either.
So these guys were following us around everywhere we went. We kept saying no we don’t want a moped ride to town. No, no, no, no, no, and no. But they just wouldn’t leave us alone. Extremely annoying. We tried to get on the bus twice. The first time the guy just no, the bus isn’t running. The second time he just closed the doors. Bastards. I’m not sure if you can tell but this whole incident really pissed me off!
So we decided to go to an internet café and find out how to get out of this place. We searched and searched and all we found out was that other people have come across this border and they all ended up taking the moto mafia to Chau Doc. So we left the internet café and tried to find some food. They came back again and got upset and showed the Vietnamese in out language section that says “Leave me alone!” I also looked pretty pissed so he eventually left us alone.
We ate a little roadside food and finally accepted our fate and took the mafia bitches ride to Chau Doc. We settled on two bikes for $12. More than I think they deserved but that is were settled on our haggling. It was only a 40 minute moped ride and of course they didn’t drop us off where we wanted. So we told them that we wouldn’t pay them unless they brought us to where we wanted. So they did. Thank god.
But of course the bus doesn’t leave anytime soon. We have 2 hours to wait before we leave. We sat in this office with this girl that sold us our tickets. For the next hour and a half we attempted talking to this girl and another guy who came in a little later. They were fun to watch and try to talk to. I believe they helped us relax a little more. Then when it got close to it being time for us to leave the lady brought us across the street to another bus place to wait. Now we were starting to wonder. Angy said that she saw our lady pay the people at this new bus station. We were thinking that we over paid and this girl payed the regular amount and pocketed the rest. Shady shit going on everywhere. So far Vietnam is giving me a bad taste.
Finally after waiting another 30-40 minutes our mini-van comes. Mini-van? Great. Then they tried to put us in the back row which was tiny. Luckily Angy got in first and realized that I wouldn’t fit and said no. They moved us forward a row and that was our spot for the rest of the ride.
So we started on our trek from Chau Doc to Ho Chi Minh. The mini-bus wasn’t full when we left, but after an hour of driving and picking up random people it was full. Only 18 people in this little thing. It was a horrible ride. I barely fit in the seat. My knees were pushed into the seat springs of the backrest in front of me and my ass was pushed into this bar in the back of my seat. Tiring, painful, cold, hot, and annoying.
Nobody spoke English and we weren’t really sure when we had to get off. Even worse, we only made one stop in 6 hours. Everyone got off for about 20 minutes to get food drinks, use the bathroom and whatever else.
Got back on and continued our tour. We finally arrived in Ho Chi Minh at around 10 - 10:30 pm. Remember we started at 5:30. Yuk. We hopped into a taxi and went to a hotel in our book. Thankfully they had a room. We looked to make sure it was up to Angy’s cleanliness standards and took it. It was big and nice with a great view of the city.
After that we headed out for dinner at like 11pm! We had Italian at this restaurant up the road from our hotel. It was yummy but we were both tired. It was off to bed after that!
