Today we got up at 6am (I know, I thought we were on holiday too! ;0) so we could take the boat for a tour of Chaudoc.

We visited a small village where a lady was making the most amazing small coconut cakes, saw the entrance to a cemetery from 1700-2000 and the outside of a local mosque.

This village was a Cham village. The Cham are now a minority people steeped with a wonderful inheritance rich in secrets of architecture and long lost talents in building.

The Cham started building the ancient temples of My Son near Hoi An, and to this day, their secret of sticking the bricks together without cement remains hidden.

After the Cham village we jumped back on the boat and went to a fish farm.

These farms are basically floating huts on the Mekong with four main types of fish. I would love to say I remember all of the fish though Basa is the only one!

The fish farmers get loans from the bank to pay for the fish food and 7 or so
months later when the fish are ready to sell they can start repaying.

After the fish farm we transferred to a small (3 people per row) faster boat where our bags had been packed onboard to take us to Cambodia.

This boat was much faster than our leisurely tourist one and the spray from the river was massive so we all raced to shut the open windows before we got soaked :0

90 or so minutes later we were at the floating visa office on the Vietnam side.

After 20 minutes there we headed 10 or so minutes on the boat to the Cambodia
border where our paperwork was processed and our Cambodia visa was issued.

Thankfully we were advised against the online eVisa as its wasn't recognised at this border and Kim from our group had to pay again :(

Once we had our visas we headed off for the 3 hour bum numbing boat ride to Phnom Penh :0

Even nearing this city the architecture is so different from Vietnam.

Upon landing we were set upon by 3/4 tuk tuk drivers all vying to take us to hotels.

We settled on one and with Kim went to look at hotels, eventually settling on one that the driver clearly took the long route to (Rob and I discovered the river was 800m or so away on our walk later!)

After dumping our stuff and chilling for a few minutes Rob and I then went for a walk, grabbed some beers (75cents per glass during happy hour!) and dinner an then figured out what we would get up to tomorrow.

We decided to take a tuk tuk around the city and killing fields and to then take the 4 hour bus to Sihanoukville by bus for a much needed rest for a day or two.

Goodbye Vietnam, hello Cambodia!! :0