Goodnight Vietnam

We were heading to Cambodia today which is only 6 km away from Phu Quoc island but we had to take a ferry 45 km to the Vietnam mainland and then get on a bus to the border, there is not a sea crossing passport process.

We woke up this morning with crazy strong winds, massive amounts of water pouring down from the sky and with gigantic waves. We were worried that the ferry wouldn't go and if it did it would be even more rough than on the way to Phu Quoc Island when I nearly vomited (read about that here). We called to make sure the ferry was still running and it was. Twenty minutes after we were supposed to be picked up and there still wasn't anyone to come and get us, I was worried we would miss the ferry. I gave my receipt for the transfer to the owner of the hotel who called the company and was told that someone would be there to pick us up very soon. The driver that came was a taxi and not a minivan full of tourists as usual. I asked the owner for the receipt and she told me she had given it to the driver. I thought it really strange that we had a taxi pick us up but we were going to be late so we grabbed our bags and got into the cab.

Once we set off I asked the driver for the receipt back and through hand gestures he communicated he didn't have our receipt or ticket. This made us really start to panic, was the owner still trying to get back at us over the motorbike scratch? We tried to get the driver to turn around but he wouldn't and we didn't have any time to spare. The driver raced across bumpy roads, throwing us and our luggage all about in the back of the car. We pulled up to a different pier than the one we had arrived at. I was worried the driver was going to try charging us for the ride so I quickly grabbed our bags and jumped out of the taxi.

A little boy came running up with two ferry tickets in his hand and handed them to me and then ran off. We thanked the taxi driver for his help and I tried to apologize for all of the awkwardness as we rushed down the enormous boat dock.

The boat was much smaller than before but despite the crazy weather earlier in the morning the ocean was really smooth and the ride very easy. We arrived in Ha Tien, Vietnam and were picked up by a shuttle bus and taken to wait for an indeterminate amount of time for another bus. We ended up waiting for an hour and a half and then boarded a small van with 7 other westerners to cross the border from Vietnam into Cambodia. We all gave our passports to the driver who drove us to the border had us line up for a health inspection, which involved nothing more than paying $1 USD and then the driver disappeared for the better part of an hour. When the driver mysteriously returned, everything was sorted and we get back in the bus and headed off into Cambodia.

After about 20 minutes of driving in Cambodia our van passed a larger bus going in the opposite direction. Both vehicles stopped and we were unloaded onto the big bus along with lots off local people to Phnom Penh. In Phnom Penh we were dropped outside of walking distance to our hostel so we got a tuk tuk to take us there for $1.

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I again confused the driver because our hostel was #63 and the numbers were going down from 50 so I tried to get the guy to turn around. The driver didn't understand what I was saying so I spent 15 minutes standing in the rain with him trying to explain. Finally he called the number for the hostel and found out that he was correct and I was wrong, the numbers reset at zero and then started counting up again. I got a bit of an annoyed look from the driver but we made it safely to our hostel.

Check out all of today's pictures in the slideshow below: