Brendon
It's been a while since we wrote on here, so there is much to tell. Come to that we have 3 hours till we leave for our flight to the nice sandy beaches (we hope), so get yourself a cup of tea, get comfortable, cuz here it comes......
After the killing fields we supported more of the local economy to go out for dinner again. It will be very weird to hold a pan in my hands again when we get back. Not sure if I still remember, but we live in China Town, so I guess we can gently go through the transition phase! It was an Indian this time and we ordered enough food for at least 5 people. Basically trying almost everything they had, which excited Hester no end. Feeling a little nautious at the end of the meal, so could just manage to tell the waiter it was the best Indian she had ever had! The rest of the evening we spend trying to get some pics on here, which resulted in making cd's from one of our memory cards, so which means we'll still have many more pics to show everyone. We will try to get some more on here at some point. The next day it was on our way to Vietnam. As we had enough of busses and pick-up trucks (why? I don't know!), we decided to use the big river. Boarder crossing by boat. It was very relaxed and great to be on Mekong (technically we were on a side river, but it was big). The boarder crossing went very smoothly, although quite time consuming ( 1 hour to get some stamps). It was funny that we first stopped on the Cambodian side were we were checked out of the country, then had to get back on the boat and sail for a couple of hundred metres to get off again for the Vietnam boarder. If you expect a nice jetty you are wrong. It was just the side of the river, which was some grass in between quite steep hardened mud. We just had to jump ship so to speak, so we could walk into Vietnam. We were allowed in!!! The boat took us further to our first destination in Vietnam: Chau Doc. The boat was basically full with a tour group, a couple of locals, and us! God, our we happy we are not with a tour group. "The leader", an australian girl, would not have survived it. Very, highly annoying. For example when she received all the passports (including ours) she handed them out to her group and others she just threw aside while saying "not my people". She had the human touch you expect in that line of work, ha ha! It was fun to see. In Chau Doc we got ourselves into a hotel (with tv, as Holland would be playing Russia in 2 days!) and went for a stroll. It was a little fishermen's town which had a very relaxed feel to it. We heard that in Vietnam the hassling woulkd increase even more, but there was hardly any. Except our own stalker, who would just wait for us whereever we were and went. Hester was about to deck him at one point, but the nice feel of the town avoided an international conflict. We had dinner on the market square/side of the road, where we had our first bowl of Pho. Vietnames soup filled with noodle, meat-ish balls and herbs. Local dish they eat here for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The next day we firstly walked through the market and got stared at a lot. Very white girl and giant. Who would ever believe that I would ever be considered a giant. For the ones who don't know me goal during my teens was to be 1.70meters! We took a boat tour with a very friendly and funny lady. The 2 of us in a tail boat going to see some sites. We saw a floating market where all the fruit and veg is stuffed inside boats, a fish farm where our guide got very excited feeding the fish. There were literally thousands of fish and hardly any water, so when food was thrown in, the battle commenced, which resulted in water been splashed everywhere till about 3 metres away and fish upon fish flapping away to get food or back into the water! I think the second part is quite essential for a fish, but who am I to judge! She then took us to a little village, where we got sucked in to buying stuff. I have now D&G glasses which costed 2 euros, but honestly they are real!;-) And we bought other local handmade stuff. Here we saw our stalker again as well!!! We were well out of the town, but pushed us to go to Sam Mountain later, again! And that he would be waiting at the hotel for us! What can I say he is a man of his word! When we got back from the boattrip we bought some BBQ-ed banana's which looked like turds and tasted just a little bit better then that. Went to the hotel (yes, he was waiting) and said maybe we'd go later. After a movie and little shut-eye we went down stairs 2 hours later and..... Still there, with his buddy on his motorbike ready for Sam Mountain! Which gave a good view over the town, rice fields, and over Cambodia. Furthermore there was an amazing sunset to be seen. Not wanting to waste the guys day, we took them to bring us there. When it says Mountain, although I am dutch, I would call it a hill as well. Although there were some steeps bits, and little Hester flew up with her moto and I arrived about 5 minutes later. His explanation: she is tiny and I am tall! I prefer tall to fat! There were moments we almost stood still and I thought we had to walk up. The views were very nice and apart from caged monkeys (tourist trap) it was cool to be there. We were asked to be on a picture with some other people as well ( do we look so freakish?).
Next day we took a bus (boat wasn't an option) to Can Tho, the capital of the province and the most buzzing place in the neighbourhood. It was very nice and relaxing actually. We booked ourselves again on a little boat trip for the next day, which would take us to two floating markets, noodle "factory" and through the countryside. The little trip would be for 8 hours and would start at 5.30 am, so we could see sunrise. We walked through town, had some lunch (many many spring rolls, very nice) and booked our next bus journey as well. The following day would be ideal as it would start with the boat trip, come back, straight to the bus, which would take us to a ferry town, where we would take the ferry to an island for some beach relaxation. It would all plan out slightly differently, but this will follow.......
