So after the best sleep in the world ( Isla managed 16hrs ), we headed of by bus towards Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. The journey was long but enjoyable, looking at the water buffalo playing in the rivers and workers in the paddy fields. The journey should take a total of 7hrs and after 5 hrs we reached the Cambodia/Vietnam border. The buses aren't allowed to transport you through the border so we all had to get off, walk through a passport control outside the terminal and then walk into the terminal for immigration before meeting our bus on the other side. The bus companies that operate on this border run have a system where they take your passports, go ahead and get them stamped at the immigration desk and then call you forward, apparently making it quicker for those that use the buses. Simple enough, however once inside the terminal a security guard dressed in green, who didn't speak any English kept waving his hand at us trying to shoo us backwards. A local man eventually translated that the computers were down and we had to wait outside the immigration office.

We didn't really pay much attention as there were so many people coming through that we would have lost our place in the queue so we acted as if we were listening but kept edging forwards like everyone else. We also did not have our passports so we didn't really want to be to far away from them. For a communist country I was amazed at how relaxed the guard was in trying to get us back, in England you definitely would have been moved back and held behind some sort of divider. Oh well after 2 hours our bus lady called us out and handed our passports back, we walked through without the guard looking at us, put our rucksacks through a scanner that the guard wasn't even looking at and then headed for the exit. Finally a guard looked at our passports and then compared against the owner but quickly let us through clearly doing it for the sake of doing rather than for a security reason.

Thankfully that's our last border crossing over land for 2 months until we reach South America. I will never complain about airport protocol again lol. We got back on our bus and made the 2hr journey to Ho Chi Minh.

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh at about 1700hrs, it was still light and we were on a main road which had loads of travel agencies on it, selling trips and excursions. We booked a bus to take us to Vung Tao which is the nearest seaside resort to Ho Chi Minh as we did not fancy spending 5 days in the city. The bus left every 30mins and the lady arranged for transport to take us to the bus stop. Now whilst waiting for this transport we got to see how crazy this city is, thousands of bikes/mopeds fill up the road making way for the odd bus or taxi. There appears to be no system other than I am using this bit of road, you find your own. Low and behold two bikes turn up and the lady tells us to get on with our big rucksacks and our little day sacks. I get on the back of one and Isla gets on the back of the other. Before I could even see if Isla was on ok, I was off, zipping in and out of traffic, taking corners like a pro racer, forcing other traffic to stop. I was frantically looking over my shoulder trying to see where Isla was whilst my driver was just honking his horn whilst forcing other road users to stop.

My driver managed to get me to the bus stop safetly, after about a 2mins journey. To be honest I loved it and would probably pay money to do it again. Isla and her driver arrived shortly after, Isla didn't look best pleased and the driver was laughing. Probably thinking stupid western princess. Isla got off and said that she was literally squeezing the guys shoulders every few seconds as near miss after near miss came and went.

We got on our mini bus and made the 2hr journey to Vung Tao, in the company of a group of young Vietnamese girls who found it funny that we were English and kept asking us the occasional question. We eventually made it to Vung Tao and checked into our hotel, which was more like a motel and probably the least equipped place we have stayed in on this trip.

After dropping our bags off, we had a stroll around the beach area to see what was what, it was a very quiet beach resort, mainly for locals, only a few other Westerners were seen. All of the food venues seemed closed and the resort had a very ghostly feel about it. I did some research online and apparently over the period of Tet ( which is similar to the Chinese and how they celebrate a New Year at a later time ) Vung Tao shuts down as the locals prepare for the credit crunch that follows Tet as people stop working.

We decided to head back to the hotel and get some sleep, in order to have a better look at Vietnam in the morning. Cambodia left its mark spiritually and humbled us with their history but we were happy to see the back of it. Whether that was due to the manner in which we arrived we don't know but Vietnam so far appears a million times better. Maybe keeping to the new rule of arriving during the day is working, we will see.