Chau Doc to Phnom Penh Cambodia

 

March 8, 9 , 2012.

Stayed in Chau Doc for the night – lovely dinner from a vender, rice and barbequed pork, very cheap and very good.

In the morning we are going to go to Cambodia as there is not much to see in Chau Doc and do not want to stay at this place for another night. The hotel was very noisy and there were a lot of small flies on the ceiling which kept falling on the beds. So have decided to take the boat to Cambodia in the morning. We have a short walk to the boat and then visit a fish farm and the Cham -dominated Chau Giang district which is influenced by Islam. The peoples originally came from Indonesia.

Then a leisurely trip up the Mekong to the Cambodian border where we get a visa glues in the passport. The immigration stop was every interesting, the boat just pulled up at a very rickety dock and we got off and walked up and turned in your passports and departure forms from Vietnam and then we were off again. Must say that the tour guide had taken the money and filled out the information while we were traveling here. She had turned them in when we had had lunch a few minutes earlier at the lunch stop. After receiving our visas it was back on to the boat for another hour the again we pulled up at a bank along the river and were advised to get off and take our luggage, not seeing a bus one was hoping that we were not being hijacked but there was a van there to take us on to Phnom Penh and our hotel. The hotel was not as described on the internet, but was not bad, fairly clean and was not noisy and has air conditioning so one can cool the room before going to bed. Tomorrow we can explore Phnom Penh.

Just a note - do not think that I would visit Vietnam again unless it was to spent time in the area between the two large cities of Saigon ( Ho Chi Minh  City) and Hanoi, there are far too many people, motor scooters and the area of the Mekong Delta was not what I had expected, guess when I was looking at travel documentaries  it was of the area further up from the delta.  That said I am glad that I did visit and was not disappointed by what i did see.

ramp to get to immigration office to have passport stamped

Cham people

Cham people

Immigration office

Mekong river

Water Buffalo

Bank just up from here where we caught van to Phnom Penh

did not take any more photos after we go on van as there were thirteen of us in the van and it was too crowded to take any photos, was a bit too crowded to move much with all of our luggage.