Not a fun day! It was the day we left phu quoc island and sadly Vietnam, off to Cambodia! After a fantastic month in Vietnam it felt sad and even a bit strange to be leaving! We were starting to really get a taste for the food, learn more of the language so a shame to be leaving. Reflecting on our month there, there are a few key things I've learnt:
- you can put anything (and multiples of anything!) on a scooter!
- if you thought I was a slow eater before, you should see me with chopsticks!
- horns here are both annoying but a necessity, I think if you were deaf you would be knocked over in the street/off your scooter in 2 seconds flat
- go with the flow, you never quite know what you're going to get when you book something (hotels, transport and tours!)
-wifi is everywhere and free, makes travelling easy and a different experience
- Vietnamese people are so friendly and helpful, even without doing so to get money from you like with other countries.
-choose the buses over trains!
-we are all so spoilt in Australia

What a fantastic country it is, but still a lot of sadness remains from the war. A lot of poverty and disability is in your face and hard to see. But, they seem to love tourists and use our money for income in many places. The country is so diverse with so many beautiful things to see, it's really hard to say what our favourite part was!

Anyway... Back to our border cross to Cambodia!

We got picked up from our beautiful resort and taken to the ferry. The ferry was nothing like the ferry over. It was ancient, only one level, and barley looked sea worthy! Our luggage got put on the roof, and we took our seats. I made note to check for the emergency exits- ha may not have been worth it if tragedy had struck, both of the emergency doors didn't clasp closed properly so they had tied them shut! Anyway it was a pretty yucky trip across, we both felt sea sick, not sure if it could have also been attributed to starting malaria tablets that morning. Chris had some chickens in a box next to him that kept chirping the whole time! After an hour and a half the journey finished (phew!). We got in a taxi and taken to a restaurant as part of the transfer we had booked with a company in phu quoc. We used johns tours again, don't bother paying extra money for them- not worth it you just end up with everyone else who paid less!!!! Anyway we had a couple of hours there whilst they sorted our visas. Not much to see, went and spent our left over Vietnamese at a supermarket on toiletries. Then, the fun began! 15 of us plus luggage were crammed into a mini van and told we would stop somewhere else to change buses after the border. The boarder crossing was a bit strange, we walked through one section to exit Vietnam, then there was a few hundreds of metres of no-mans-land where there were casinos (and new ones being built!) then we walked through the Cambodia border where we were taken for a 'medical check' which is completely dodgy! Some people paid, some didn't. We showed our yellow fever vaccine book and refused to pay, seemed to work! They took your temperature from your forehead (?!) anyway mixed reviews of it on the web, don't think u really have to do it. A kiwi couple we were with gave the guy $10! Others just said they had no money so didn't pay like us.
Then we sat in the van about 15 mins whilst the driver spoke to some people on the side of the road. He then told 6 of us going to Phnom Penh to get out of the van, so we did along with 2 Dutch girls and 2 massive German guys. Our van then drove off and left us with an even crappier van, a driver who spoke no English, a mean old lady who we think was the drivers mum who we called the witch, and about 5 other Cambodians. They started putting our backpacks on the roof (no roof rack) we all said no and didn't let them take them. They then stuck planks of wood out the back and tied our bags on to that, we pulled them off and said no again. We were so annoyed because we had paid lots of money for 'a nice bus with one seat one person and where luggage goes inside' to quote
Johns tours. Anyway they kept refusing to fold down the back seats to put our luggage in, and kept demanding we sit 4 to a seat in the back (which was only for 3 people). We had a big shouting match with them (was good having 2 massive German blokes) and eventually we got our luggage in the back with a tarp over it and door tied shut. We had 3 of us in the back row and 3 of us in the next row (Chris was on a broken fold Down seat with no back). The whole van had 13 seats including the driver. Over the 4 hour drive the old witch would stop the van and offer a lift to more and more people, were they constantly said we had to move up and have 4 to each row, we all refused and it was actually physically impossible with Chris' broken seat and the 2 Germans sitting sideways because of their massive height! At first we just couldn't believe how many ppl they put in, in the end we all just laughed when someone else got in, we ended up with 26 people! And at one point the witch made a lady share the drivers seat- he still continued to drive like a maniac with only half a seat! It is the usual for them (see cover photo!) but we were all just annoyed that we paid so much for this when all of the locals paid next to nothing! After a 4 hour drive on dirt roads in 40 degrees with no aircon we were pretty happy to arrive in Phnom Penh but pretty annoyed when the driver also dropped us far out of town! One of the funny German guys went up to the old lady and asked if se knew were there was a big oven we could push her into- was pretty damn funny (She obviously didn't speak any English!) so we found a tuk tuk and made it to our hotel (one up banana hotel- really nice!) thank goodness it was lovely! Had a really nice dinner at a place just down the called herb restaurant, also highly recommend it!