An eventful few days to update on with more twists and turns than a Josephine Cox novel (no piss-taking intended, mum, honest!)

Our few days in Sihanoukville ended on a bit of a high after the horror that was Ocheuteal Beach on Chinese new year, as we found a nice spot at Otres Beach and a top restauarant in the Holy Cow for our last supper. So we set off in the minibus for Kampot the next morning with our spirits renewed (admittedly it helped that we'd moved hotels too, so we managed to get a decent nights sleep without a nightclub over our heads).

We arrived in Kampot in mid-afternoon, got dropped off at our guest house, then went for a walk down to the riverside. On a beautiful spot on the river, Kampot has withered and died somewhat since its glory days during French colonial times. Sadly, most of its beautiful buildings and apartments stand decaying and empty and given that they've now increased the cost of entry to the Bokor National Park just up the mountain to $25 a head, I imagine it'll get even worse… the price put us off and we decided to leave Kampot after only a night! In truth, there isn't a great deal else to do there and we always planned to use Kampot as a staging post to get us across the border into Vietnam anyway, but we decided to go sooner rather than later… $50 dollars for 2 people is just too much and there was a serious danger of us eating into my alcohol budget, which is a big no-no!

We were aided and abetted in our plans to cross the border the next day by an Irish couple we met called Denis and Carla. They happened to be on the same minibus as us from Sihanoukville to Kampot, but on account of the fact that on first seeing them I'd written them off as Americans, we didn't actually speak to them until we bumped into them later that afternoon and they turned out to be very nice indeed! Once we were able to decipher the numerous "yer man" and "yer fella"s that sprinkle their language, we were away! They were planning on getting a taxi down to the newly opened Cambodia / Vietnam border crossing at Ha Tien the next morning and they put us on to the company who they'd arranged to take a share taxi with, so we could try and go with them. For those of you not familiar with share taxis, the principle is this… like the name suggests, you share it with other people and it's therefor a cheaper way to travel because you only pay for the seats you use. So you turn up, pay for your two seats, then the taxi doesn't leave until the other places have been filled. The observant amongst you probably noticed that just then I didn't write "then the taxi doesn't leave until the other two places have been filled", because - and I didn't realize this before - in a 4-door Toyota Camry, there are far more than the standard 4 or 5 seats you would think. There aren't even 6 or 7 seats... No, in actual fact there is room in a Toyota Camry for a whopping nine, yes NINE people!!! In addition to the driver, Me, Rach, Carla and Denis, (who all sat in the back), our numbers were swelled by a further 3 Khmer people on the front passenger seat, as well as a 4th Khmer girl who took pride of place alongside the driver… on his seat! He himself somehow managed to drive the vehicle and negotiate the less than perfect dirt track from somewhere between his seat, the handbrake and the ashtray… hilarious!!! Never seen anything like it! Mum - if you''re still concerned about shuttling 4 WI ladies around on the back seat of your Fiesta... don't be!

Against all expectations we arrived at the border in one piece and the local Moto men were kind enough to form a guard of honour around us on their bikes and escort us into town. I was about to point out this tremendous gesture to the others when I realized that rather than welcoming us to their city, they were all actually creaming their pants at the thought of extorting as many US dollars from us as they could foe us to make the compulsory 5km journey the other side of the border on to Ha Tien town…

Before that, we had to negotiate the border crossing… To say it's a little out of the way is an under-statement. This crossing hasn't been open for very long and certainly not to 3rd party Nationals, so we were something of a novelty as we made our way on foot out of Cambodia, into No-Mans Land, then on into Vietnam. This was easily the most exposed either of us have felt on this entire trip… well off the beaten track, miles from anywhere, no idea what we were going to do on the other side… and we loved it!

I was a little disappointed that there wasn't more barbed-wire marking the route and some overly-aggressive Alsatian dogs chasing us through, would've been a nice touch, but overall it went without a hitch. I had a romanticized image of the final scenes from Von Ryan's Express in my head as I day-dreamed about making a run for it over the border and along some train tracks, but then I remembered that Frank Sinatra got shot at the end of that, and anyway, there were no train tracks, so we just walked, no shots were fired and we simply climbed onto a Moto each!The Moto journey into town was also pretty hair-raising. I had to double-bag… my small rucksack attached to my big rucksack and both of them attached to me, trying to pull me off the back of the moto as my man bounced us along the road and apart from a few scary moments when the guy driving Rachel in front of me headed off in a different direction, we arrived in Ha Tien without a hitch.The 4 of us made camp in a hotel reception while we planned our next move and before long we were on another minibus heading for Rach Gia. Rach Gia was where we needed to be to either get the bus to HCMC, or from where you take the ferry over to Phu Quoc island, which Denis and Carla were planning on doing. Given that our beach-time in Sihanoukville had been a bit of a non-starter we decided to carry on with the others to Phu Quoc Island the next morning, so we stopped for the night in Rach Gia with a plan to now head out into the Gulf of Thailand again, rather than make the bus trip to HCMC… things were moving fast now!So, next morning we were up with the mopeds at 6.30am and on the dockside for 7am to catch a ferry to Phu Quo… only to find that all the ferries were full... the curse of Chinese New Year / Vietnamese Tet, had struck again! Not only that, but the 1 flight that day to the island already left… we weren't heading to Phu Quoc after all. So next stop was the bus station… we decided to head to Saigon after all!

Now, the thing about me and travelling is that everything happens far too early in the day for my liking… so imagine my horror when we arrived at the bus station and we discovered that all the reliable comfy buses had already left or were sold out! It was only 7.45!!!

We did eventually manage to get ourselves 4 spots on the most surreal bus we''ve ever seen... complete with mini-beds and everything! We managed to rest quite well for most of the 7 hour journey, but the deafening sound of the Vietnamese comedy CD which acompanied us all the way in to HCMC had to be heard to be believed. I hope the accompanying video manages to do it justice!

So we eventually arrived safe and sound in Siagon, where we''ve spent the last 4 days. Great city w hich i''ll let Rach describe another day. The one thing i'll say about it is that you haven't seen a lot of mopeds until you''ve seen the mopeds in Saigon...