02-09-11 - Journey to Vietnam

Happy Birthday Christine! Yesterday was a complete right off! We both (and infact most people on our tour) stayed in bed nearly all day. Let's just say it wasn't a pretty sight. We then went out in the evening for a meal, another bbq restaurant, and I think by then we were starting to function again hehe! We have decided to give up alcohol for the rest of the trip….hmm.

Today we set off travelling in a mini bus for a few hours to the Vietnam border. It was quite a long ride but we filled it with games of guess the celebrity etc. When we reached the border, the bus left us to walk through the border ourselves which consisted of a couple of barriers and a few huts. As we stopped at pretty much every hut for different forms to fill out and passport windows, we watched all the Cambodian and Vietnam people (and possibly other nationalities) just walk straight through. Perhaps they knew something we didn't as it took us about half an hour to cross the border. I was also a little concerned when Graeme was asked to put his rucksack through an x-ray machine, the chap running the machine started saying something in his language and ran off to get someone. We were getting very panicked as we had just read a sign about the death penalty. Thankfully it was only the machine that had stopped working and everyone was told to carry on through.

We then continued in another bus to our hotel and we checked in. It then seemed like we did loads, we went on a boat ride on the Mekong River with a little girl guiding us, and she took us to some floating houses and a fish farm. She fed the cat fish, which whipped their tails and nearly splashed everyone. We then got back on the boat and headed to another house on the river with a lady weaving threads to make clothes. Graeme put on a sarong and women's scarf, so I think we now have the photo request of him dressed as a lady boy. To get to this house we had to walk across wooden planks from where we docked, which wobbled and bounced around like mad. This was made worse when we realised we were late for our next tour and had to rush back across these quickly, thankfully no one fell in even with the little kids getting in our way and slapping us on the arse as we walked passed. Honest we didn't push any of them in ;-)

We whizzed back to the hotel for a motorcycle tour. We had a bike each and our own private chauffeur. We clung to the back of a guys bike as we were whipped round corners and up and down pot holes (I am never going to complain about pot holes in England again, our roads are brill). We finally made it to the top of a mountain to watch the sunset in a bar, which was beautiful. We then headed back to the hotel for a quick meal before bed.