SAIGON, BABY!

Saturday, 29 December, 2007

Whew...what a day...for some reason these internet cafes never have full-on AC which is why some of these postings are brief, without photos (which take forever to upload) or full of grammatical errors (we try to avoid the latter as much as possible)...

Anyway, we are writing this after an ok dinner at an Italian restaurant called "Good Morning, Vietnam" near the main part of the touristy section (they call it "backpacker's row").

We left lovely Kampot, Cambodia at 7:30 AM. It was sad to leave such a great town and our favorite guesthouse yet -- not so much for the facilities (see previous posts) but because it was such a friendly place. Every time we sat down to eat breakfast or have drinks after a day-trip or dinner we would have great, friendly conversations with the other guests and ex-pats who happened to be about. I can't recommend this town enough. But anyway, we were warned that the half-paved, half-dirt road to the Cambodia/Vietnam border was a pain, but, frankly, after the godawful, butt-wrenching road to Bokor, we found it pretty good! It was interesting driving through the small non-touristy villages, all filled with locals selling their wares to other locals and looking at us as if we were from another planet. Let's see how long this lasts...
Once we made it to the border (this is after about two hours in a Toyota Camry with a driver who Laura dubbed "the Cambodian Steve McQueen" for his expert skill in dodging the other drivers and bicyclists so well and so fast!) it was only a slightly confusing matter to get across. First we had to show our Visas to the Cambodian side. The officials looked them over and scribbled some stuff in a steno-notebook ...then sent us to another small office where some military guy did the same thing. Then...we crossed into Vietnam. Military officials from that country ushered us into a building. Despite the Marxist nature of this country it was fairly relaxed. After looking over our Passport and Visa they ushered us to a long bench outside where they made us fill out some form, basically the same info on our passport. After one official left with our forms, some older military dude came up to me, chuckled, shook my hand and said, "Bonjour, you can go now" in a way that made me wonder if there may have been some doubt about us getting through!

But anyway, the worst was not yet over. We had read up on the Lonely Planet website travellers' forum for info on this particular border crossing since it was fairly new. Most tourists interested in crossing the Cambodian/Vietnam border do it the easy way - they take a bus or boat from Phnom Penh to Chau Doc but since we were already in Kampot, which is south of Phnom Penh and had already been to Phnom Penh we didn't want to have to pay a $25-$40 taxi fare to go back to Phnom Penh then try to grab a seat on a boat to travel south again. It didn't make much sense. Besides VERY FEW tourists were doing it our way so why go with the flow?

Once we finished all the paperwork and made a pit stop to the "WC" we ran into the "moto-mafia brigade." This consisted of one a*shole in charge of various leering dudes on motor-scooters all offering to take us to Chau Doc at inflated prices. It was about 27 km away so they wanted $15 USD each. We read online that some people got it for $7 USD but they didn't seem terribly intrigued by this bit of information. As there was virtually no competition (with the one evil guy in charge of his hirelings) we got them down to $10 apiece. In the US this would be a bargain since it wasn't that close. Whatever. $20 to get us 27 km instead of $14 USD isn't that big a deal!

What did suck was what happened next -- instead of taking us to the PUBLIC bus station they took us to a private bus company which had minivans instead of public busses (obviously some sort of commission-scam going on). We had the name of the bus station we wanted to go to but the j*rkoffs insisted this was it, as did the ticket sellers and other two customers. It was weird -- no one spoke any English and, as this was a small border city, we had no idea how to even go about trying to find the regular bus station. So, worried that we would arrive in Saigon too late to get a hotel/guest house we decided (after deciphering how many hours it would take) to just go ahead with this company, pay our motos to leave, and grab the next mini-van which was leaving in half an hour. (Charles posted an account of this to warn future travelers on the always-interesting talesofasia.com website).

The six-hour ride was grueling, as you can imagine, but several passengers, intrigued by the rare foreign visitors, were nice and practiced their English on us and helped us out however possible, even sharing the food they brought on the trip. I can't tell you how happy I was to make it into Saigon though. What a city. Nothing one could imagine. We were warned that the cyclo/moto/car situation was outrageous but this is unbelievable. I took some video which I'll try to post sometime in the future. Tres bizarre!

We managed to book (thanks to the international dialing on our phones) the "best guest house" one of the Lonely Planet dudes picked. Not so sure about Lonely Planet's taste anymore. Actually, it's not bad, just kind of baffling. The staff listlessly hang out in the "lobby" -- most of them sleeping on the floor, looking half dead. The room was FIVE FLOORS up with no elevator. You can't imagine how tiring that was after a six hour crammed minivan ride to hike up these floors with our luggage. We took showers, collapsed on the bed for two hours then went out to see this area, getting the opportunity to safely cross the streets on the way! Tomorrow we booked an all-day city tour and we'll probably leave the next day for aflight to Hoi An!

Over and out...

2 comments:

elmer68 said...

Hey you crazy adventurers!!!

Thank you two so much for a hell of a fun read (which I'm sure will only get more fun. Cut yourselves some slack- this is so very very readable compared to the subliterate scribble-scrabble I've seen on travel blogs.

Well I have to say from my perspective I think that both of you )no offense meant to Laura) have brass balls for doing this. I would never do this, and in my current state of health I could not even comtemplate it. So thank you again for letting me in on your adventures.

See you when you get back!

Ron

Charles D. said...

Glad you are enjoying it. I think you'd really like Cambodia - not so sure about Vietnam!