We board a boat in Saigon and head upstream along the Mekong River towards Vinh Long. We ride through a floating marketing which seems a little deserted. We apparently missed the busiest time which is first thing in the morning. We continue and stop at a souvenir shop where they also show how rice paper, coconut sweets and poprice are made. The coconut sweets are ok for a while and the poprice is pretty good. We continue up the Mekong and arrive at Chau Doc where we believed we would be staying in a floating hotel. Unfortunately it's full and we stay in another hotel in the town. This is fairly typical of tours in Asia. Changes are never notified prior to purchase :-) We go for dinner with two Australian couples, a dutch fella and a women from France. We have pork curry, frogs legs, bbq chicken and cooked chickens feet. All the food is good but the chickens feet are just odd and flavourless. To accompany the meal the girls all ordered some banana wine and the fellas had beer. The banana wine arrvies in plastic bottles which is always a sign of a certain class of alcoholic beverage. It's strong so it gets shared around and I seem to have more than my fair share. It's about 2am by the time I get to bed and the next morning comes all to soon.

We spend the next travelling towards Cambodia. Me with a significant throbbing of the skull and Helena seemingly feeling fine. We stop briefly at the border and continue into Cambodia and arrive at the port around 2pm and catch a shuttle bus into Phnom Penh.

Andy + Helena

Croc watch = 0