Leaving Cambodia

Our time in Cambodia had come to an end and we would be leaving in in the morning to travel into Vietnam. Or Viet Nam. Whichever. We were all packed and ready to go, so we grabbed a quick breakfast and checked out of the hotel. The Mekong Express had sent a shuttle bus to pick us up and we jumped on board and were grateful that potential problem # 1 had been averted. We were on our way to the bus station, and stopped only once to pick up 3 odd American guys. We checked in our bags and waited for the order to get on the bus, and soon found our seats and settled in for the long journey across the border.

I still wasn’t feeling top-notch as I was a bit run-down; nothing serious but just needing a bit more R & R. So as soon as the coach pulled out of Phnom Penh I put on some tunes and drifted off to sleep. It wasn’t the best sleep in the world, especially not because the girl behind me kept kicking my chair throughout the journey. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant place near the border crossing, but as both me and James had bought supplies we didn’t purchase any of the questionable meals that were on offer. As we pulled away from the stop we arrived at the border crossing checkpoint. We had handed our passports in to the trolley dolly as she would be organising us getting through the checkpoint. When we had stopped she called out our names from our passports and advised us to get off the coach and go to one of the border checkpoint booths to have our passports checked and our fingerprints recorded. After that we handed our passports back in and got back on the bus.

Nearly at the border...

I had earmarked the second half of the trip to Ho Chi Minh city to watch a film on the netbook, and The Killing Fields had been heartily recommended by James, especially after our visit to Cambodia. I pulled out the netbook, plugged in my earphones and settled down for some movie action. And then we were told that we would all need to get off the coach and go through security checks, just like in Canada, Malaysia and Thailand. So I packed everything back up and followed everyone else off the coach. We queued up to go through passport control again and were called up when our passports had been checked again. The next stage was to put everything through the x-ray machine. As I was still feeling under the weather I didn’t bother to take everything out of my pockets and take my belt off, just put both bags on the conveyor belt and walked through the personal scanner. Nothing went off. But then again, nobody was really taking any interest in what I was doing anyway. Once outside I found the bus, got back on and got The Killing Fields on the go, once I was absolutely sure that there were no more stops.

On the buses

I didn’t get to finish the film as we arrived into Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon) after an hour or so. We were dumped on the roadside near the bus station and left to fend for ourselves. I had a copy of the city map saved on my phone and the hotel was not far, so we lugged our bags the short distance to the Ha My 3 hotel near the market. It was nice enough, but I think that we have got a little bit snobbish since staying at the Baan Andaman and the Angkor Pearl. However, this room had no windows but had pretty much everything else we needed. And the location was bob-on too. It was nearing dinner time so we wandered out into the streets of Ho Chi Minh to see what kind of eateries we would be facing. It took a long time to find anywhere decent, and the price was right so we sat down and ordered. I was having a “dry” night as I still wasn’t back to normal and I shouldn’t have bothered – a can of Sprite was more expensive than a bottle of beer. What a world…