Carbon footprints…
We have managed to get
all the way to central Vietnam
from Moscow
over land, using only buses and trains (and a one-off hitch-hiking stretch with
a lovely Mongolian family). Except for our little side trip to Japan from Beijing,
we didn’t travel by plane at all. Until now. From Hoi An we drove to the airport
in Danang and flew to HCMC (Saigon). We loved
it here so much that we didn’t want to waste a whole day riding a bus. That we
had experienced already, and although it’s comfortable enough, it’s very time
consuming. More than three months has already passed, and we feel we need to
treasure the tiny nine months left…
Ho Chi
Minh City
In Saigon
we quickly ticked the boxes of the must sees, mainly the independence palace
and the cu chi tunnels, used during the war. Then we bid our farewell to Vietnam,
after 18 absolutely lovely days. We opted for the most romantic crossing (of
course!) over to Cambodia – a two day
boat trip through the Mekong Delta, leading almost all the way to Cambodian
capital Phnom Penh. We were riding a medium sized motor boat most of the time,
but hopped on and off little row boats that the locals peddled to various
sights, including a fishing farm and a floating market. At the end of the day Lars
recognized one of the other passengers. It was a guy called Al, who we had
shared a taxi with in Mongolia
almost three months ago. He had since met up with his girlfriend Sarah and dyed
his hair blond, which is why we didn’t recognize him at first. Small world
indeed! They had followed a completely different route from us, but still we
met up here by chance. We all stayed overnight in the little boarder town of Chau Doc, where there’s
absolutely nothing to see, but we managed to find a nice fish restaurant and
some cold beers. Early night though, breakfast was at 6.20am the next morning…
This turned out to be a lovely early start as it was served on a floating deck
where we had an excellent view of the sunrise over the river and the river
folks starting their day.
On
day two we crossed the border to Cambodia. This was a bit tricky,
mostly due to communication intricacies. As most of us felt that we were
perfectly capable of handing over our passports our selves, we chose to not pay
the ‘visa assistance fee’, but were then apparently not allowed onboard the
boat across no-mans land, supposedly three kilometers long. It was actually just
about longer than one kilometer and soooo worth that short walk. It was a
fascinating no-mans land… It was filled with, well, men. We passed an entire
village, which seemed a bit odd. Were they Cambodians or Vietnamese? Does it matter?
Do we need nationalities? Can we live here too? Anyhow, after the brisk walk,
we found the visa guys in the back room of a café. They had a table, the visa
stickers for our passports, and two stamps. After we got the visas - took about
two minutes – we went to the office next door and got the visas stamped. Here,
the one girl who had paid for “visa services” had to get off the boat and get
her passport back from the guide who had gone into the café on her behalf, and then
herself hand it over to the officer with the welcome stamp. Oh, and the officials had a box
marked ‘Suggestions’ filled with money. I found that a bit funny… After all this,
we all boarded a new boat, and settled in for a couple of hours more on the
photogenic Mekong
River. After a final
short journey by mini-bus we had arrived in Phnom Penh. Here we accidentally lost Al and
Sarah, as we had asked the tuk-tuk drivers to take us to a hotel that no longer
existed (out-dated Lonely Planet, oops…), and thus got dropped off at different
places. We hoped that we’d run into them by chance again. The world isn’t that
big after all…
--(@
Lou
