We left Sihanoukville and made some quick stops in Kampot and Kep before crossing the Xa Xia land border with Vietnam. Kampot is a river town near the Cambodian coast that serves as a base for – among a few other things - touring Bokor National Park. We took a tour of the Bokor Hill Station – the ruins of a French Colonial hotel/casino that was built in the 1920’s on top of a nearby mountain in the national park. Because of the elevation (1700m), it is a nice escape from the lowland heat and provides some spectacular views. Right now, you can only get there with an organized tour agency because the road is under construction. The ruins were abandoned twice because of wars and the remaining structures have grown orange lichen all over giving a ghostly appearance. A Chinese company is investing a billion dollars to create new hotels, casinos, swimming pools, golf course, etc. for a mega resort. It was nice to see the place before it becomes too developed.
After Kampot we moved on to spend one night in Kep – another former French colonial town - with the intention to eat a large plate of fresh crab at the crab market. The crab dinner did not disappoint. We also enjoyed a night-cap and tasted our first quality glass of red-wine in Southeast Asia, a Cabernet-Merlot served at a fancy French restaurant near our guesthouse. This French restaurant overlooked the Gulf of Thailand, was decorated in a trendy style, and was playing music that included such classics as John Denver’s “Country Roads” and even a Karen Carpenter song I recognized but don’t know the name of. This was another one of those moments where we had to ask ourselves, “where in the world we were again?”
In our first blog entry we established travel “KPI’s” We feel now would be a good time to give a KPI status update.
# times Elise and Brian get in "a disagreement": Let’s be honest, we will never go into any details on the world-wide-web on this KPI. However, after 4 months, we are performing well in this area. It is probably not worth keeping track anyway because as long as we don’t kill each other and also come home happily married, we should be good to go in this area. Projections are positive for both.
# times Elise is allowed to be in tears): Elise is proud to report that to date she is at zero to date. She must be meant for travelling because no stressful situations or uncomfortable conditions have yet to break her. However, she did get a bit testy with a tuk-tuk driver in Kep. One inherent annoyance of arriving to a new town on a bus is that you are often mobbed by moto-taxi or tuk-tuk drivers who want to sell you a ride to your guesthouse. Sometimes we don’t know exactly where the bus is dropping us off and like to get our bearings before committing to a ride (often you can walk). But fierce competition among drivers results in latching on to you from the instant you step off the bus. Apparently Elise had enough of that and when an overbearing tuk-tuk driver leached on to her in Kep, she very firmly – actually forcefully – told him to please get back and leave her alone while she got her bag and talked to her husband. Any of you blog readers who know Elise probably would have found that as entertaining as I did. We may need to add “# of times Elise snaps at a tuk-tuk driver” to the list of KPI’s.
# times Elise and Brian get significantly ripped off: We’re still good here. No major rip-offs.
# times Elise and Brian get ripped off just a little bit: It is very difficult to define a minor rip-off. Realistically, we are charged “tourist” prices instead of local prices in a lot of cases. Everything is negotiable and many times we have no clue what the going local price is for something. For example, we were perfectly happy with our purchase of oranges in the village market near Battambang, Cambodia until the little girl in the Smiling Child library pointed out what the price should have been. We had another recent example in Vietnam where after a small purchase a fellow passenger on the bus pointed out to us that we paid double what we should have. On the other hand, the very small amount of “extra” that we paid (fractions of a dollar) goes a lot farther in those vendors’ hands than it does in ours. So it does no good to worry about stuff like that.
However, our first blatant scam happened on the border crossing into Vietnam. Because of some vague information we found in our research, we decided to buy an all inclusive bus/boat ticket from Kep, Cambodia to Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam. The price looked the same as doing it ourselves, but from what we could tell, we would not have to negotiate several transfers and ticket purchases. We were told the bus goes through the border and would take us to the ferry terminal. The reality is the bus took us to the border and put us in the hands of some motorcycle taxi drivers and paid them cash for our fare and to buy us our boat tickets (we could have easily done this ourselves). However, the moto-taxi driver then proceeded to buy us the cheaper “slow boat” ferry ticket (3-4 hours and uncomfortable) instead of the 1-1/2 hour hydrofoil. I am confident he pocketed the difference (about $9). Once we realized what had happened it was too late and that guy just lied to us and said we were supposed to have the slow boat. But we had no proof or leverage at that point and were on the other side of an international border. No big deal in the big picture, and we arrived on the island after a very long day of travelling. But if that’s how the game is played in Vietnam (which we’ve heard it is) then so be it. We have since turned on our “bullshit meters” to high alert.
Phu Quoc island was very nice. It is a relatively expensive resort island off the coast southwest of Vietnam. But we found a very nice inexpensive bungalow near the beach and enjoyed two days in the sun reading books and planning our visit to Vietnam. We also decided to take a sunset cruise/fishing/night squid fishing excursion our last night. It included hotel pick-up and a BBQ dinner. This turned in to our next rip-off but makes for a funny story. We booked through our bungalow’s front desk. We were supposed to be picked up at 4pm, but at 4:30 realized that no one was going to show up. Our hotel then called the tour company and from the broken English we think we were forgotten about or our bungalow’s concierge never called in for our tickets. Since we were leaving the next day, they scrambled to change us to a less-expensive tour – one that left later but did not include fishing. That was fine with us and the price difference was refunded. We were then taxied to a boat and left to wait for a tour. We sat on the boat for about 45 minutes wondering if anything was going to happen when finally a group of Vietnamese tourists showed up and the boat fired up its engines. No one seemed to acknowledge us or speak English. This seemed odd, but we just decided to go with it. We cruised out in the choppy waters, picked up some sea urchins that were grilled up for anyone to taste for about $1 each, then anchored for squid fishing. At that point we started to notice sea-sick passengers starting to vomit over the edge of the boat. We’ve observed that Asians seem quite susceptible to motion sickness based on many bus rides so far, so I began to fear that this was going to get bad. And it did. We were shown how to squid fish (drop a lure into the water and slowly bring it up, much like crappie fishing). But that only lasted about 10 minutes until there was a constant flow of vomit entering the water from all sides of the boat from about three-quarters of its passengers. Chunks were appearing floating in the water all around. I was trying to think positively and thought maybe this would make the fishing better, but we were soon asked to put away the fishing gear and headed back to shore because everyone was so sick. Our cruise lasted all of 45 minutes dock to dock with 10 minutes of fishing in clouds of vomit. So now we’re back at dock at least two hours early. We sat on the boat another half hour until dinner was ready – no BBQ, but actually some pretty tasty rice soup with squid – and chatted with the few of our fellow passengers who also were not sick and stuck around for dinner (there were about 6 of us left, and we started with over 20). We were owed a ride back to the hotel, but had no clue if and when someone would show up to take us back so we grabbed a Sinh To (fruit shake) at the nearby market and then hailed our own moto-taxi back. Total waste of money, but we can’t help but just laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation.
Our final rip-off (or better described as just a screw-up based on misinformation, poor Vietnamese bureaucracy, and no ability to communicate and coordinate through any complex ”red-tape”) is our Vietnam Visa. We thought we were saving money by purchasing our Vietnam Visa in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (the cheapest place in the world to buy it). You have to buy a visa in advance for Vietnam and every other advance visa we bought there is “grace period” for you to enter the country from the date you bought the visa. The length of stay then starts from the date you cross the border. Unfortunately, our 30-day visa for Vietnam was issued to us starting the day after we bought it and no one asked or informed us that we needed to specify a start date – and we had no way of knowing. All information we could find ahead of time online and in the guide books was vague or contradictory to us. So we entered Vietnam with already 2 weeks of our 30-day visa expired – so much for trying to plan ahead! We have applied for a 1-month visa extension in Saigon (now actually called Ho Chi Minh City) and are now waiting a week hoping it goes through. For us, Vietnam will require more than a month – we were planning on the extension anyway. But now we’ll have to settle for 6 weeks max pending a visa extension.
After Phu Quoc, we moved on to Saigon, where we’ve spent the last few days. Getting here was a bit crazy. After our ferry docked on the mainland in Rach Gia (this time a nice high speed Hydrofoil), we booked a bus ticket to Saigon on a medium sized aircon bus.. Our driver was a maniac. He drove at high speeds, passing many a large bus and motor bike and narrowly avoiding head-on collisions. Our journey included a fender bender in which he merged in and had a glancing blow off another large truck. No big deal – the drivers calmly talked and resolved the issue as there was no major damage - nothing a little gasoline wipe-down of flaked off paint couldn’t fix. The highlight of the trip was a pissed-off motorcycle driver who was enraged by being run off the road. We didn’t see it, but we’re guessing that is what happened. The moto driver stormed onto the bus and for about 5 minutes yelled and cursed at the driver and even bitch-slapped him a few times. We give props to our driver for staying calm and just taking the blows until the guy finally calmed down and left. We’re guessing this wasn’t the first time.
So that was our first impression of travelling in Vietnam. I think it will be a different “game” here so we’re preparing ourselves appropriately. We’re currently in Saigon – a very nice, modern, and energetic place. Saigon deserves its own blog entry so more about that next.
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