Hello again. . . Well we did leave Sihanoukville, even though we didn't really want to. We had such a nice chilled out time there, but still we decided to head towards Kampot, as Claire mentioned that there was Boker national park and it was supposedly worth seeing. . . . ! A bit more on that later. . .

So leaving Sihanoukville was a little emotional, well not so much for me, but for the Cambodian people we had met, more specifically Chenai. She was a lovely girl who worked at the place we were staying at and made us feel really welcome, she had a great laugh and smiley face all the time. We befriended her and one night took her out for a meal and a few drinks, although, she couldn't really keep up with our drinking habits?!?!

So, in saying goodbye to her, she cried and went all quiet and shy, unlike her. . . ! I later got an email from her saying that she loved us and missed us lots, etc, etc. . . aaarrrrr bless!

So, we left in a taxi and headed to Kampot about an hour away and after checking a few guesthouses (dumps) out, we where recommended one by our taxi driver. . . . It was actually quite nice and we soon got settled and got a bite to eat and a juice and chilled in the afternoon sun. . . !

We booked to go on the Boker national park tour with the owner of the place, as he had a new 4X4 truck and said his tour was better than the others cus they had old cars, etc. . . . Later on in the day, the guy came back to us and said that some people had wanted to privately book him and his truck, so he had arranged a better deal for us with someone else, "No problem's" he said, "better deal". . . . Hhmmm, we were feeling a little dubious to say the least. . . . That evening we didn't do much, Claire popped into a shop to try and buy some stamps for her postcards and after a few minutes of trying explain the young girls seemed to know what we wanted and asked how many. We said 6 and she trotted off happy that she had understood us. It was not until she came back that we had to laugh. . .. She brought back 6 jam parcels, you know the small ones you get with your toast in hotels?!?!? We cracked up and I made some joke about how funny it would be to try and post the cards with them stuck on?!?!?

Later, I just watched a movie and crashed out. . . In the morning though, we were up for breakfast and after Claire and Nick telling me about their dreadful nights sleep listening to the dog chorus, gheckos and bangin music, yeah we noticed the big truck had gone. . . We were supposed to leave between 8 and 8.30, so by 9 o clock, we were getting a little annoyed, well that was until out ride turned up a few minutes later. . . . Pleasantly surprised. . . ? No! Not in the slightest. . . . A converted truck turned up that lookedand sounded like it should have been on its way to the scrapyard! The back was full with 9 people, which looked overloaded and all that left us was cramped inside. . . .

After showing our disgust we reluctantly climbed aboard and although we were trying to make the best of a bad situation, we were not happy! We got to the gate of the National park and were stopped by what it seemed were the tourist police. A good thing it seemed checking the vehicles over and seeing if the drivers had licences, etc. . . Our truck was a state and our driver had no licence! Happy days. . . . ?!?!? Well, clearly the tourist police are doing their job well, as instead of turning us away, the reluctantly (Yeah, whatever?!) took a bribe of cash and waved us through. . . . . ! Oh yeah and to add insult to injury, while we were waiting, now over an hour late, the nice big red shiny truck that we were supposed to be in flew past us and hit the dirt road at high speed, making mincemeat of the potholes. . . . ?!?!!? You can imagine the fury now?!?!

Again we calmed down and tried to enjoy the day! I could go on about what we did and were we went, but to be honest, it must have been the crappest trip I have ever been on! So, on that note, I am not going to bother wasting my time. . . All I will say is that you head up the dirt track, broken road, very uncomfortable after about 30 minutes for 3 hours to see a load of old ruins, that are rubbish, the most exciting part was watching the guys cut a tree up that had fallen across the track. . . . ! We were going to confront the guy when we saw him at the top, but thought better of it. He would make some bulls*** excuse and laugh at us anyway. . . . !

That night out of principle we ate a drank somewhere else and actually had a really nice time, we met a lovely Cambodian girl who taught us some of her language. The meal was also fantastic, although western, it was great! We left the following morning for the Vietnam border and after a bit of a crazy taxi ride got there safe. . . It was all a bit subdued and nice as we mozied on through leaving Cambodia and entering Vietnam. . . . On the other side we asked some official where the bus station was and as they didn't speak much English, they just pointed and said 1km. . . We think. . . . We were then greeted by the local dudes on their bikes asking if we wanted a lift and when we sais to the bus station, they said "no bus station". . . . . Confused, we tried to understand, but didn't get too far and got the impression they were lying. . . Oh no, was this another corrupt border? Of course it was. . . . So after arguing with the guys about the bus station and walking around 500 metres, we jumped on the bikes and headed into town. . . . We past a parked bus on the way, but it didn't really register then, so when they took us some 700 metres further to an old bus depot, they said, "look, no bus station, closed!". We then asked for them to organise us a taxi, because it came apparent that we were not exactly where we thought we were. Chao Doc, the place we needed was an hour away and these guys were convinced they were gonna take us on bikes. . . Absolutely no chance!

We then sat down and tried to calm ourselves and saw a ray of light, a bus was coming down the road. . . I waved for it to stop then noticed one of the guys on the bikes having a word with the driver, so as it got closer, the driver just waved at me. . . . He did stop at the bus stop about 30 metres away, so Claire made a run for it, but he pulled away, casting his hand in the air as she banged on the bus in frustration. . . ! We were not happy to say the least. . . The guys again were saying "no bus stop!" and trying seal the deal. . . . hmmm, like that was going to happen. . . !

After shouting at one of the guys and nearly knocking his head off, I calmed down and we all headed back down the road to where we had seen the bus parked up. . . . Another bus passed, but didn't stop, but we made it to the end and Nick asked the bus driver and he said, "yes, leaving in 5 minutes". Happy days, we got on the bus and chilled. . . . I the corner of my eye, I saw one of the sneaky b******s walk around the bus a start talking to the bus driver, so me and Nick jumped off the bus and told him to do one! I was about to lose my temper big time! I think the guys realised that they had lost this little battle and I saw him ride off. . . . Once the bus was on its way, we had to laugh, but my god, what is it with these people. . . . ?

On the bus journey, we started seeing the nicer side of Vietnam, young children all wanting to say hello, and people generally being a lot more pleasant! The bus journey was a little crazy, with the driver using his horn at ever opportunity. We didn't quite get to the bus station at Chao Doc, as we got off early, a slight miscommunication, I think. So we checked at a local hotel and confirmed it was about a 1km walk down the road. . . . On the way, we got befriended by a guy trying to give us a lift on his push bike. With all our luggage, it wasn't going to happen! He didn't take the hint and just seemed to follow us. . . . He was joined by an old guy with a similar bike coming towards me, I step aside to move out of his way, so he proceeded to ram his bike into my leg and then point at his seat for me to get on. . . . Now, I am not being funny I nearly dropped him there and then, Claire and Nick stood shocked at his actions, so after a lot of swear words, I gathered my stuff and moved on, with a sore leg! At the bus station, we were accosted by another wanting to help. We didn't need help, we knew where we were going and walked up to the counter to by a ticket. . . I think we eneded up paying a little extra as a tourist and for some reason he got his cut. . . ? The guy who had followed us on his bike also seemed to get given something, god know why, but hey, what another crap welcome to a new country! We virtually got going straight away on a dodgy looking local bus. The people on it were really friendly, but seemed a little chunkier than most of the locals I had seen. . . More on that later. . . . !

So, into the journey, we realised that the bus was probably gonna stop at every bus stop on the way, but hey, we were moving, so it's all good. . . . Now then, back to the chunky locals. . . After a while they started stripping off to reveal 1000's of cigarettes strapped to their legs and chests. . . . We were not sure if they had come over from the border or what, but it was so funny to watch as at each significant stop, there was money changing had for big wads of fags. Later we realised that under the seats there was also 1000's more. . . . The bus journey was great fun, as we had a good laugh with them in broken English and once they realised we were not bothered what they were doing, they seemed to like us a lot and shared fruit with us. . . !

We got to Can Tho and at the bus station, we were pounced on again, but quickly chucked all our bags on a tuk-tuk and headed off to a hotel. . . The hotel was comfortable and the guy who welcomed us was very pleasant. He offered us hid tour of the Mekong Delta, which we gladly accepted for the following day. A 10 hour boat journey around the Mekong Delta and the floating markets, etc. . . The only problem was that it was leaving at 5.30am and we would still be up at 4am watching the rugby (England vs South Africa - World cup final).

We went out that night for food and realised that there wasn't really much of a nightlife there, so decided to hit the sack for a few hours, then wake up for the rugby! I sort of wish I hadn't woken up, as watching England lose was a little depressing, especially as I thought that we were a little robbed by some very dodgy referee decisions, but hey, that seems to be the case all the time for English teams in sport, or am I being a little hard?!?! I think not. . . All that aside, Well done to South Africa, they had a great world cup and played consistently well throughout!

So after the game, we got an hours kip before having to get up again for the trip! We were all surprisingly OK at 5.30 and after meeting up with our boat driver for the day, we headed to get some breaky, 2 coffees and some bread and jam, with bananas. . . . Our boat was a little thing with just enough room for the 3 of us, comfortable enough, we headed out onto the huge Mekong river. . . . We did the full 10 hours and saw some great sites, I think the best thing is for you to see the photos and make you own mind up. . . . The highlights were obviously seeing the floating markets and the beautiful countryside via small canal networks. We were also taken to a place where they were making the rice noodles. . . . That was quite interesting to see and great as they used all of te rice product, also burning off the extras to fuel the fire that they cooked the noodles off with to a wet like pancake, which is the dried for an hour and then shredded. . . The ashes from the fire were then used as compost and the split liquid product from the rice fed to loads of pigs, which were coolio. . . . ! Our driver also took us round the garden area and showed us all the natural products, fruit and veg, etc. . . .

At around lunchtime, we stopped off at a fruit garden place and got a great welcome of a nice back and neck massage (we would have to pay for it later of course), but yeah it was great. . . We ate and had a few beers then crashed out for an hour in hammocks, I was woken up and then we jumped back on the boat to head off again. . . . The weather for most of the day was really hot, however on the way back we had about an hour of a rainstorm, which was also coolio. . . . The day was great and I had a nice time, it is really hard to explain it all properly, but the sites, smells and sounds are something else. . . . !

When we got back, we went for a quick beer and Claire and Nick bought a new bag, as Claire's had split and Nick had been pestering her to get a new one for ages. . . . We then headed back for a bit and I dropped on the internet as I had a weak WIFI signal in my room, so was able to chat to my sister and parents for a bit, which was nice! I also downloaded all of my photo's, plus Claires, as my camera has now packed up! Later, we decided to head out again, but as there was real nightlife and we didn't really want a beer anyway, we decided to go for a massage at the hotel over the road. . . . Blimey, it all got a bit weird. . . ?!?! We went up to the top floor and was met by a guy and lots of cute girlies and we realised that we could also use the steamroom, sauna and Jacuzzi first. The only problem was we didn't have any swim wear on, so with towels round, we continued into the steamroom. Claire got too hot, so tried the sauna, but was too hot in there to, so climbed into the Jacuzzi (naked). With the bubbles going it was OK. . . . I tried the sauna, but also found it really hot, so joined Claire and Nick in the Jacuzzi. . . . I sort of climbed in with my towel still on as I am sure they didn't want to see my bits. . . It was really funny!

After a bit we jumped out and went for our massages. . . It sounds like Nicks was the best and he was also offered all sorts of extras, even though his wife, Claire, was next door. . . ?!?!? We finished up there and had a good laugh about it afterwards. . . . We tried to go for a beer, but everywhere was shut, even though it was only 10.30pm, so we called it a night and after chatting with a few friends online, I crashed out. . . .

We got up early as we had booked a mini bus to take to Ho Chi Min City (Saigon). So at 6.30 we were on the road again and after changing into a bigger mini bus, by 7am we were on the road to Saigon!

We have a bit of an itinerary for Vietnam thanks to Claire, so hopefully I will be making the most of my last few weeks in Asia. . . So, speak to ya soon guys, I hope you enjoy the photos as much as I enjoyed the place!

Hey, see ya soon for a beer J