Chau Doc, Vietnam

How to get to Cambodia? We can either get the bus or sail down the Mekong Delta. No contest. We set off early in the morning from Saigon and were at the dock a couple of hours later. The Mekong looked impressive and I felt rather smug, we'd found a pretty cool way to cross the border.

I sat back in a hammock and watched the locals busily getting on with it all while I topped up my ever improving tan (it's just past the embarrassing stage). Just then it all started to go a bit .... crap! We wandered into a coconut candy factory where I tried some snake wine,

Snake Wine

the poison gives it extra potency (either that or you die) and that was the extent of the Mekong Tour (other than watching activity on the banks). Our floating hotel was way too pricey for the standard we got and the little town (Chau Doc) that it was floating by had about as much charm as the hookers in Saigon.

Damn Kids!

The next morning we visited a fish farm (it was feeding time ... the joy) and a minority population of Muslims (who tried to sell us cakes that would apparently give us colic). This was all after getting us up at 6am, i'd have took the extra two hours in bed. As we headed towards our fourth country, the boat broke down.

When the boat was fixed it all started to get exciting again.

Uh Oh!

The Cambodian border crossing was swift and hilariously informal, the guy who granted me my visa didn't even require me being there, our guide just took our passports and got them for us. The Cambodian people of the Mekong were fascinating and friendly, they waved at us from the banks as they washed their skinny cows.

Mekong

When we reached the appropriate part of the bank we got off the boat, into a bus and headed for sunny Pnomh Penh.