Border Crossing (23rd March 2011)

‘Three days on the Mekong’ or at least that’s what they sold me, me along with a whole load of other people all of whom at 8am in the morning are not, so far, happy with what we now seem to be doing. We were sold a slow, peaceful, leisurely boat ride along the Mekong to the border crossing and then a continued slow boat to Chau Doc (a border town) for the night on a floating hotel. Now if I just wanted a fast boat to Chau Doc including the border crossing it would have cost less than half what I had paid! Fortunately I wasn’t the only one in the same boat though and along with 4 retired Israeli guys we argued the toss for the next half hour, of course to no avail and ended up taking the fast boat anyway with the promise that after an hour we were going to swap to a slow boat! Yeah right, we all knew that wasn’t going to happen!

Anyway we did manage to get to the border ok and this time didn’t have to pay a bribe to get into the country, at least I didn’t. There was an English guy and an American guy whose passports were decidedly debateable, they at some point had managed to drown them and they were pretty much ruined and barely readable, but this was Vietnam and after a $10 bribe they were both allowed in! That was $10 each!! A near-on fortune by local standards. At least they got in though, I wonder if they’ll ever get out!

The border crossing

An hour later we arrived at our floating hotel when it promptly started to rain. A light lunch was included in our trip but there’s light and there’s light and this was positively floating on air, we were served with a pot noodle.....and it wasn’t even a good pot noodle! So far this trip sucks!

So doing the three day trip with me is the 4 Israeli guys, a retired American (military?) guy who claims to live in Saigon with a Vietnamese girlfriend (but you wouldn’t have thought it the way he talks to people!) travelling with a retired Kiwi guy who says he has a Pilipino girlfriend. They both claim that it’s true love etc etc yet later I hear the American guy saying how he’s going to fix the Kiwi guy up for a good price with a girl in Saigon!!

In Phnom Penh there were clear and very obvious signs of a lot of prostitution going on with Western men and it seems it’s as common here, the American guy even tries to justify it all to me saying how in Vietnam the girls seems to ‘enjoy it’!! Another addition to our party is a younger American guy who says he’s a doctor and been volunteering in Siem Reap (for 3 weeks!!) it then came out later that in actual fact most of that time had been sightseeing and that the best part of his whole trip had been when he got to ‘shoot guns’. And these are my travelling companions.....I guess you’ve just gotta make the most of it right?!

After the worse lunch I think I’ve ever had the two Americans, the Kiwi and I decided to go check out Chau Doc, this was after I had to change rooms seeing as mine was already swimming in water which was pouring through the light fitting.

So Chau Doc. We had made a plan to go and get some more food to make up for the Pot Noodle and I wanted to get a sim card seeing as I’d been out of text contact for the time in Cambodia. So heading into Chau Doc it soon became clear we were not only a rarity in the town but also that no-one actually wanted us in their restaurant or bar. On two occasions we were waved away and directed elsewhere, I blame the Americans! ;-) The only person that seemed happy to see us was this lady bar-b-qing on the street, I’m sure the food she had was lovely but it was the whole chicken heads that put me off!

Bar-B-Q chicken heads

After walking round for a good 45 mins it turned out the only place that would let us eat in town was the hotel we had just come from. So far not really enjoying this town. So back there we headed and for the next couple of hours I had to listen to the two Americans going for it, making the world their own and deciding that anywhere outside of America really wasn’t worth wasting their time on. They both had an awful lot to say about their President, none of which was good and I actually can’t think of the last time I came across two so self inflated, bigoted, racist, chauvinist arses in a very very long time (Ok the wording may not be right but you get the gist!)! You really couldn’t make it up the things they were saying and the worst most incredible part of it all was that they really believed it all! They really believed that as a country and as a race they had the upper hand over the rest of the world! So tell me.......why were they here?? I did attempt to ask the question pointing out that if they hated everything outside of America so much why were they ‘outside of America’? But they weren’t really getting the gist of my questions and after a while I realised that I was as insignificant to them as the rest of the world and on that note I left them to it and went to bed!

Fishing on the Mekong