Boating through the Mekong Delta

After eating our fill of Khmer curries it was time to head to Vietnam. This involved a bus to Phnom Penh (we took the boat up to Siem Reap, so thought we'd try the road) a day there getting our visa, again as we hadn't spent anytime dealing with bureaucracy we went for the personal approach, and went in person (every hotel and every second shop advertises they will do it for you for little extra cost) and discovered that when they said come back and collect the passports at 5pm we thought that they would be ready by two and turning up at 4:15 would be fine (the office hours were listed as closing at 4:30 so we wanted to make sure we got in) but no when they say 5 it means they will start putting the visa stickers in the passports at 5.

Visa in hand the first visas that we had before turning up at a border we chose to go on the "Slow" boat thinking more opportunity for taking photos! as well as being a quarter of the price but after a two hour minibus trip to the ferry we realised there was more to it than the speed of the boat. After a cruise in the rustic boat (all the luggage and 7 of the 9 people on board where on the port side to keep the boat more level.) We arrived at the boarder post where we all had to get out of the boat to sign out of Cambodia, then back to the boat for a 500m trip to the Vietnam post. We then discovered our boat didn't continue with us and we were introduced to our guide for the remainder of our trip, she explained what each of the stages we had to go through to complete the formalities including the 4000 dong health check which only seemed to involve paying money? but there where very clear official signs indicating that this was a requirement (with differencing amounts if you hadn't been vaccinated against various illnesses- though this wasn't checked).

Boarding a slightly less battered boat we continued our journey to Chau Doc receiving a bit of information from our guide as to what we were seeing. We were slightly shocked to see that the stereotypical images of the farmers with their buffalo in rice paddies with conical hats really appeared to be true. Settling into our hotel we prepared to work out how to find our way to the Island of Phu Quoc but more of that next time.