A really beautiful fishing village. Very small.

Took a motobike up the hill (Mt Sam?) to see the sunset over Cambodia. Cheap beers (75c AUD) and hammocks.

Then headed out for dinner on the waterfront. Apparantly the grilled frog has a lot of bones.

In the morning, we piled into two vans and headed for the Cambodia/Vietnam border. Much of the drive to Vietnam from Sihanoukville was just as bumpy as the "Dancing Road". But the great scenery and great conversation distracted me and I barely noticed how the road was taking a toll on my bum. We stopped a couple of times, but the one stop I remember was pulling over to the side of the road in a forest in the middle of nowhere. A bunch of guys got out and stood on the side of the road to pee. Must be nice.

When we got to the border at Phnom Den, Cambodia, it was hot hot hot. We crowded into a room to get stamped out of Cambodia. This was another long computer-free process. I was among the first to finish and we left the stuffy room to stand outside in the limited shade. All of these women who were crossing the border walked up to us and stared while tried to stay cool in the sweltering heat.

I couldn't stand my big backpack at this point. I was thinking back to when I was packing it and regretting the fact that I didn't follow my instincts to take out more stuff. I wanted my suitcase. We kept having to move here and there and stand around. I didn't want to keep it on, but I was dreading having to set it down and pick it up again. But I still believed in the backpack and myself and hoped that it would eventually get easier to deal with.

Our time in Vietnam will be a little shorter than originally planned (as we have detoured to Laos) and have a set date when we need to meet friends in China. When we see the option to go from Phnom Penh to Saigon via the Mekong delta this looks like a good option and it idoes not cost much more than the direct bus trip.

We are collected early in central Phnom Penh. The guide is careful to check we all have valid Vietnam visas before we set off and we then have a hair-raising drive through the city to the boat.  The tour map makes this look like a short ride but it takes almost 2 hours.  At one point the driver stalls the bus so he orders out the people sitting nearest the front to give us a push start. 

When we finally reach the boat we need to fill in details of our passports and visas 5 times;  after the visa formalities I'm beginning to think that Vietnam may be a little bureaucratic.

The boat chugs gently down the Mekong for an hour or so to reach the Cambodian border where we need to disembark and complete the usual formalities.  We then re-board and are taken onto the Vietnamese border post where we are met by an efficient young lady who is our Vietnamese tour guide.  here we need to have our bags x-rayed and complete a health check (cost $1) but it all is well organised and quick as the river border crossing is only used by a few people. 

After lunch we continue on a different boat down the Mekong, then leave this for the Chau Doc river.  There is much more to see here , fishfarms, boat yards and the river is busy with local boats.  At Chau Doc we are booked into the basic but convenient Vinh Phuc hotel.  The rooms are small and ours does not have a window but it is only for one night and the room has a fan.

We still have time before dinner to explore the town.  Somehow it is not quite what I had imagined.  Chau Doc is a busy commercial town with very little in the way of toursist attractions but this makes it interesting.  After dinner some of our group head out to a beer hoi bar that they have been told about.  BiaHoi is local beer and is very cheap.  We try to find them on foot and can't so hire a cyclo to take us to there.  He says there is only one Bia Hoi place for foreigners and confidently cycles us to what looks like a house with a large help-yourself vat of beer outside.  Not surprisingly this is not the right place.  I try to explain where we think the bar is using a map of the town.  He says he knows the place and we head off again.  This time he is right and we meet the rest of the group who are now bonding with some local guys.  The beer comes in plastic bottles but tastes excellent.  Our attempts to communicate with the locals are less successful, either our pronunciation is terrible or they speak a different dialect here.

We have an early start tomorrow for a tour of a local fish farm and Cham village, so we quit by10 but are already too late for the hotel which is locked up. We ring the bell and the night guard lets us in.  It is very hot in our room and the fan stops working.  It is too late to get this fixed or swap rooms and I don't fancy the thought of spending a night with no fan so have a go at dismantling it and manage to get it working again by loosening a couple of the holding nuts.   With a bit of luck it will last until morning.

5:55 Wecker. Zuerst mit Hung zum Dorfmarkt. Mangos gekauft. Fruehstuck. Mit dem Boot zurueck und andere getroffen. 4 Stunden auf dem Boot verbracht und Floating MArkets angeschaut. Dann mit dem Bus nach Chau Doc. Zwischendurch Krokodilfarm und Cavepagoda. Sind weniger. Kleiner Bus. Abends mit ein paar Norwegerinnen, einem Australier und einem Berliner Karten gespielt. Internet im Hotel kaputt...wieder nix geschrieben.

Today we were starting our 2 day trip across the Meekong Delta going from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. It was possible to take a straight bus to Phnom Penh but we decided we'd rather take our time and see some of this famed Meekong Delta ourselves. The trip overall was to be a mixture of buses and boats with a one night stop in a hotel in the middle.

The first leg of the trip was a bus journey leaving at 8:20. We arrived at our first changeover at 10:45, a transfer to a slow boat for the trip to the floating market. The floating market was a wholesale market where boats from all over the Meekong Delta would travel full of home grown fruit, vegetables and some animals and fish. The boats would stay for about a week where the family would live on the boats while they sell their boat load of produce before returning home. There were 5 of these floating markets in the Meekong Delta in total and these supplied large numbers of markets in the area with things like pumpkin and watermelon.

Once we passed though the floating market we went to the river bank to see how the locals made rice paper for spring rolls as well as pop rice and coconut candy that they used as treats. Watching the rice paper was interesting, it’s basically a rice liquid/paste that is spread over a piece of silk over a steaming pot of water. The silk holds the fluid while it is briefly steam cooked into a thin sheet. The wet sheets of rice paper are then placed on large bamboo trays, about 7 feet by 2 feet, where they are placed in the sunlight to dry.... and voila.... rice paper!

After the rice paper we went to the next room to see how coconut candy was made. Firstly they take dried coconuts and scrape out the white coconut from inside the shells. At the same time as they are doing this they are taking sugar cane and heating it to turn it into caramel. Once the caramel is hot enough, they add the coconut powder/scrapings to the caramel before spreading it out into a 1/4 inch thick sheet. They let the caramel dry before cutting it into small sweet size pieces. As the candy is sticky they wrap it first in plastic and then in paper before packaging.

From the coconut candy making we then went to a neighboring house where they were making pop rice. Pop rice is like Rice Krispies or Coco pops for anyone living in Ireland/England and probably other countries around the world. It is also the same as what's in dry rice cakes. They take the rice, still in the husks and add it to a giant wok of hot sand (The sand turns black after repeated heating if your looking at the pictures). The hot sand heats the rice to the point that it starts popping out of the husks, similar to pop corn. The then sifts the sand and the husks out of the popped rice before adding it to hot caramel. Some of the popped rice is sent to a rice cake making building but the building that we were in they made pop rice candy squares out of it instead.

We left the rice making areas and got back on the boat to head to an island in the Meekong Delta to have lunch. We spent about another hour traveling across the Delta and into a small tributary beside the island and this is where we got another, unexpected mode of transport. The boat's propeller kept getting stuck in the mud of the river as it was low tide, so we had to get off our boat and on to bicycles to cycle the remainder of the distance to the restaurant where we could have lunch and wait for the tide to come in!

We grabbed lunch at the restaurant after a 5 minute cycle up the banks of the river, another rice based dish. We got back on our bicycles and headed back to the boat. Its amazing what difference an hour can make with the tide because when we got back on the boat we were able to travel much quicker up the river. We eventually got to our port where we got off the boat and back onto a bus.

The only real different part of this bus journey was that we actually had to get on a ferry to cross the main Meekong River again. This appeared to be free and there were 4 or 5 boats crossing the short stretch of the Meekong continuously. There was a large suspension bridge being built in the distance so presumably this will do away with the ferries eventually.

After an uneventful bus journey we arrived at our hotel just inside the border between Vietnam and Cambodia at about 6:30, where we were to spend the night before taking the second part of our journey into Cambodia. We had dinner in the hotel that was included as part of the $26 ticket that we bought for the 2 days. It was a limited choice menu based on rice or noodles as usual but it still sufficed. Caroline, Julia (American) and Song (Korea), 2 girls who were on the 2 day trip with us headed into Chau Doc town for a walk and to look at the night market but I kindly declined and had an early night.

A stop over for one night on the way to crossing the border to Cambodia.  Not so much to do here. We hung out in the Internet cafe and played with some of the local kids.

Funny story; This is a small town but I still managed to get lost walking around. Not many people spoke English so we showed our hotel card to the man driving the tuk tuk and asked him to take us back to our hotel. He looked amused and laughed. I didn't know why until we got on and he drove about 300 feet and let us off at our hotel. He probably thought we were so lazy but I didn't even see our hotel only 300 feet away because I was so lost. Oops!

They do have a very scenic mountain on the outskirts of the town called Sam Mountain. Not sure if that’s what they called it or just our tour guide called it?

We stayed at the Victoria Hotel and Guesthouse. Apparently there are only two hotels in Chou Doc and our tour picked the cheap one because there wasn’t much of a shower. I would recommend the other one J

Oh my, what a country.

Imagine if, on the site of a famous battlefield in the US, commemorating the deaths of several thousand of our countrymen, they decided to erect a firing range in which you could fire the weapons with which said countrymen fought.

Tasteless? Well, think about it some. If any single country deserves to call the shots on what's "tasteless" in regard to the Vietnam-American War, it's Vietnam. And Vietnam has decreed that a firing range with AK-47s is perfectly tasteful.

Now, for a confession that will shock many of you - I was curious. I was sooo curious. It was cheap. I am traveling with a man who juggles college liberal and gun-nut in an unnervingly effective manner. I had to try it. I tried it. I told Eric that I had never fired a gun before, and he said, "well, then, let's start you on the ground floor with an AK." I am still a pacifist - if anything, this has completely re-affirmed my desire to never shoot one of those things for real.

That being said..... pulling a trigger and hearing a very loud "BANG" is fun. It's a guy thing. And, folks, picture a couple Vietnamese guys and a couple American guys sitting around shooting at stationary, non-living objects and sharing a laugh. That's what you call an improvement over 35 years ago. A HUGE frikkin' improvement.

Now, a word about the battlefield - it is called Tuc Dup Hill - Two Million Dollar Hill, I believe - because, word has it, that's the amount the Americans spent on trying to take it. The hill rules. It's a giant pile of rocks with trees and vines growing over them. Absolutely gorgeous to look upon and HELLA fun to climb on, historical significance aside. The locals, along with the VC geurillas, hid in a giant network of natural caves within the hill, which are still completely preserved, with boardwalks. The caves are a joy to explore, as are the rocks that hide them. Our guides led us on a mad scramble up the hill atop the rocks - quite easy and thrilling, though I can imagine it would not be if someone were shooting at us.

And if the shooting range were insufficient, the crocodile pit was what really put this over even Japan's lovely Gero Onsen Village as the "most tacky, surreal and hilarious tourist trap I have ever encountered". The concept is simple - you pay about 2000 dong - 10 cents or so - and get a big hunk of meat attached to a long pole, which you then use to tease the crocodiles kept in the pool below. Of course, there is also a roller coaster, a concrete lake with swan boats, and an ostrich farm.

The real highlights of yesterday, though, came on the way back to town when we stopped by a bunch of Cambodian pagodas - we were, after all, right near the border with Cambodia. These are not ancient or shiny-new pagodas - these are functional pagodas, with no-less-magnificent artwork on them. Eric would take lots of pictures and I'd play with the kids that, I'm gonna guess, go to school at them. I'd always show the kids my camera and the best thing to do ever would be take a picture of them, and then show them the picture. The second they saw it, they'd just explode in a chorus of delighted shrieking. Adorable.

Anyway, this is getting to be a bit long, and I have to go.

Something about a 6th story terrace with a view of the river at night demands that cocktails be drunk. And (shitty and overpriced) cocktails we did drink. Similarly, something about a mountaintop and fiery red sunset demands that beers be drunk. And (actually quite excellent) beers we did drink.

Like the rest of this journey, the last 24 hours have been overwhelmingly full. We spent last night in Can Tho, and spent most of today in Chau Doc, a lovely town only a stone's throw away from Cambodia. The bus ride up here was taken with a new friend, Laura, who tomorrow will be boarding a boat and sailing off to Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia. We also went hiking together, on Sam Mountain, a sacred mountain nearby, though apparently not too sacred to have a military base and numerous drinking establishments. The temples were gorgeous. And the sunset was even more gorgeous, esp. when accompanied by a few hefty bottles of Saigon Beer. And the summit was possibly the only place in the world where you can throw in a prayer to Buddha, feed monkeys potato chips and blow holes in empty beer cans, all within a few meters of each other.

To top off the day, we had some pho at a street stand, and I ate what may be the single most objectionable food ever to vegetarians, pro-life activists and anyone with western culinary sensibilities. I do not know the name in Vietnamese, but in English, I like to call it "duck abortion", "the evil egg", "non-vegetarian egg", or simply, "the Egg"(note the capital E). You can do the math yourself. Check my facebook gallery for more info.

Tomorrow we are going on yet another river cruise, and will visit, among other things, a Cham minority village and an old battleground from the American War, complete with an extensive network of tunnels. Should be a blast!

On ne pouvait quitter le Vietnam sans voir le Delta du Mekong. La ou le Mekong se separe et devient les 9 tetes du dragon. Pour aller au Cambodge nous avons decider terminer dans le delta sans revenir a Saigon et d'entrer directement en suivant le Mekong.

La premier journee, apres 3 heures de bus nous avons visiter en bateau le fameux Delta.

Les branches (les tetes des dragon) sont remplis de marches flottants ou le commerce se fait entre bateau. Pourquoi tout transporter sur terre lorsque l'on peux changer le bateau et croiser les clients en chemin.

Il y a des villes flottantes remplie de maisons dignent des banlieus avec chacune au moins un bateau pour circuler et aller sur les rives. Certaine font l'elevage de poissons directement sous leur plancher. Les trappe dans le plancher rende la vie difficile aux enfants (et aux touristes) qui doivent faire gaffe de ne pas tomber avec les poissons! Et etonnement il semble toujours y avoir des chiens sur chaque maison. Il n'ont pas vraiment de cours mais semble s'accomoder de courrir sur les minces poutre qui encercle les maisons.

En dehors des grandes villes, les maisons flottantes sont remplacees par de petites maisons sur piloti qui longe la rive. Nous avons fait quelques heures de bateau pour se rendre pres de la frontiere du Camboge. Bien assi sur le toit du bateau avec un drink, on a regarder le soleil se couche a l'horizon (c'est quetaine mais c'etait vraiment beau et relaxant!). Le long des rives les enfants qui se baignent nous ont saluer jusqu'a la brunante. C'etait sympathique de voir des enfants crier pour nous le simple plaisir de nous saluer. C'est plutot different de ceux des villes qui veulent invariablement nous vendre des trucs. On aurait ete de la royaute qu'on aurait pas eu autant de fervents sujets!

Sur le bateau nous avons rencontre un couple de Londre et rendu sur terre nous nous devions d'aller prendre une biere. Nous etions dans une petite ville dans le milieu de nulle part et donc a defaut d'un pub nous avons atteri dans un bar exterieur pour regarder 2 partis de foot en simultaner sur les 2 tele de la place. Meme les gecko ont eu du fun!

Le lendemain, nous nous sommes rendu a la frontiere. Les formalites terminer et le visa duement achete nous avons pris un autre bateau pour se rendre plus loin au Cambodge. Ce n'etait malheureusement pas le bateau de la vieille mais plutot la version nautique d'un autobus du tier monde. On a donc fait 3h dans un bateau avec pour seul siege des planches sans dossier qui vont d'avant a derriere du bateau a une temperature de 38 au thermometre (au moins 50 avec l'humidite). Le paysage etait vraiment beau et les enfants cambodgien dans l'eau tres sympathique mais disons qu'on avait hate de sortir de ce four. Ont suivit 2h de bus tape-foufounes et nous sommes finalement arrive a destination apres presque 12 heures.

C'est donc la fin du Vietnam et le debut de nouvelles aventures au Cambodge.

Miss YY et Mister Ming

ps. Comme vous l'avez surement remarque, notre acces a internet est plutot difficile ces temps-ci. Nous posterons des photos des que l'on pourra.

After a quick breakfast, we hailed two Xe Loi and got dropped at the bus station.  From the minute we stepped off, we were mobbed by crowds of Vietnamese, all asking "Where you go?"  We were hussled to the ticket office by a woman who was quicker than everyone else, and then marched to her minivan, which can only be described as a rustbucket.  We all had a seat however, and it didn't seem to be too crowded. 

Two hours later, and we arrived in Chau Doc, the nearest major town to the border with Cambodia.  We each got in a cyclo, our first of the trip, a very pleasant way to travel, despite the poor blokes who have to pedal!  We checked into a smart guest house, a bargain for $10 a room.

After a quick look around a local temple and a bite to eat at an authentic cafe (Nicola was very brave and ordered bitter melon soup, which actually tasted reasonably good!) we headed for the river and another short boat trip.  The boat was smaller this time, and rocked alarmingly as we all boarded.  Our boat lady took us across the river to see a floating village, where all the houses are built on oil drums and anchored in place.  Unlike the small houses built on stilts in other parts of the delta, these are quite large and spaced out.  People were sat on their verandas, looking after children and doing household chores.  Lots of young children waved at us as we floated by.  Many of the houses make a living from fish farming; the fish are raised in metal nets underneath the house until they reach about a kg in weight.  Overall, about 15,000 tonnes of fish are exported from this part of the delta annually.

We decided a treat was in order tonight and had cocktails and dinner at the Victoria Hotel (in our defence, we had attempted to eat at a local cafe of the plastic chair variety, but the food did not appeal, and there were no vegetarian options) - credit cards come in very handy.

• CET + 6 (www.timeanddate.com) | Compared to Vietnam time = Cambodia time
• lonely planet Cambodia (2002)
• footprint Cambodia (2003)
• the rough guide to Cambodia (2002)

Budget

• 1 Euro (EUR) = 5300 Cambodjaanse Riel (KHR) http://www.iccfx.com
• Visa $20
• Angkor toegang €20 per dag, €40 voor 3 dagen, €60 voor 1 week
• Gids €20 ped dag
• Angkor 1 week met gids = €60 + 7 x €20 = €200
• LP low budget; €15 per dag

http://www.travelfish.org/faq.php?c=3

Visa

30 dagen "upon arrival" + 1 pasfoto voor USD 20 bij "Kaam Samnor - Vinh Xuong".

Unesco World Heritage Sites

• Angkor (1992)

Unesco World Heritage submitted

• Ensemble de Banteay Chmar (01/09/1992)
• Ensemble de Banteay Prei Nokor (01/09/1992)
• Ensemble de Beng Mealea (01/09/1992)
• Ensemble de Prah Vihear (01/09/1992)
• Ensemble du Prah Khan de Kompong Svay (01/09/1992)
• Groupe de Sambor Prei Kuk (01/09/1992)
• Le site de Koh Ker (01/09/1992)
• Site d'Angkor Borei et Phnom Da (01/09/1992)
• Site d'Oudong (01/09/1992)
• Site des Kulen (01/09/1992)

Festivals

Period	Festival	City
Jan-Feb	Chinese New Year Is also bing in Phnom Penh and dragon dances take place all over the city	Phnom Penh
07.01	Victory Day Celebrates the liberation of Phnom Penh in 1979 from the Khmer Rouge.	Nationwide