February 2 Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Chau Doc, Vietnam
4:00 am up to finish packing and journal.
6:00 am breakfast (hardboiled eggs, pork sausage, coffee, Danish pastries.
7:00 check out.
7:30 board Mercedes minivan for bone jarring and dust eating two hour ride to the port where we we were to pick up our boat. Traffic wasn't all that bad but the road was and there was road construction most of the way so progress was slow and often we ended up behind a truck and breathed its diesel fumes until we could pass. If there are any rules of the road here they certainly aren't obvious. They seem to be based on a certain amount of civility mixed with an "each for himself" aspect.
9:30 arrive at boat launch. Buy a 1.5 litre bottle of water ($0.75) to remove the dust from my throat. Change $50.00 US into 750,000 Vietnamese dong.
10:00 board head splitting low ceiling boat. Not as much action on the Mekong River as I anticipated so much of the time there wasn't anything to see except the river banks. Enjoyable enough however.
12:00 Arrive at Cambodian Customs and Immigration, get checked out for departure, reload the boat and travel to the entry to Vietnam. Carrying luggage scramble and clamber up the river steep bank where there are no stairs or even cut outs in the soil. Beat off the boys who want to carry (and steal) your luggage. Welcome to Vietnam! Meet our Vietnamese guide (Vu) and proceed to Immigration. Discover that we have not been given proper forms. Wait for forms to be delivered. Fill in forms. Proceed to restaurant and have a Saigon beer ($0.67 or 10,000 dong) to wait while Vu goes off somewhere with our passports. Proceed to Customs where our luggage is x-rayed but not really inspected.
1:30 Load into another boat for trip to Chau Loc. Parts of this voyage are a little more interesting as we travel along what seems to be a narrow tributary or an ox bow. Lots of opportunity to see people bathing and working in the river and kids to wave at. The chairs in the boat were quite unstable and the woman sitting across from me fell over and almost ended up in my lap.
3:30 arrive at Chau Loc and climb up a somewhat less daunting bank. Board a bus for the short trip to the hotel (Chau Pho). Chau Loc is a city of about 100,000 and reasonably clean. I don't know its reason for being other than as a port on the river. There is a lot of fishing and fish farming (catfish) in the area and many boats loaded down with bags of something.
4:00 check into hotel. The hotel is only about six months old and the room feels very sterile to me. The room is quite acceptable if basic. There is a list of room contents along with replacement prices should you break or steal them. Now what would one do with the remote control for the air conditioner?
6:30 board the bus for the trip to the river side restaurant for dinner. I had a huge bowl of excellent Chinese shrimp soup that was more like chicken egg drop, grilled frog legs, rice, a 1.5 litre bottle of water and a Saigon beer. Total cost was 88,000 dong ($5.90).
9:00 collapse into bed.