Crossing the Mekong

Tue 15 Mar 2016 - Phnom Penh to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City)

Why is it when you know you have to be up early in the morning you wake through the night? As the phone alarm sounded its cheerful tune we wearily hauled ourselves from the bed for another long day of travelling. Don’t you hate it when holidays are over?

The Giant Ibis bus leaves Phnom Penh at 0800 and the free collection service requires you to be ready in your hotel reception one hour before i.e. 0700. By a stroke of misfortune, or maybe carelessness, we’d booked the only hotel in Cambodia that doesn't serve breakfast until 0730 but in the ever helpful ways of the Cambodians the receptionist arranged for us to order something to take away.

Sitting in the lobby with our packed bags and clutching our polystyrene trays of takeaway breakfast we awaited the arrival of the shuttle - glancing nervously at the clock ticking towards 0800. We must make this bus connection to HCMC today. Before long the shuttle arrived, collected us and then set off to collect others, some with huge bags, at several more hotels. We arrived at the bus depot a few minutes before 0800 and watched nervously as the driver struggled to find room in the luggage hold for all the giant sized bags. Fortunately ours were on the top.

Then we were off crawling through the city traffic until we reached the countryside. Miles and miles of flat rice fields later - virtually the whole of Cambodia is like the Cambridgeshire fens - we reached a large, new suspension bridge crossing the Mekong river. Opened last year as a sign of friendship between Cambodia and Japan. The river really is a monster and the bus edged slowly passed the locals who’d just pulled up on the side of the road to admire the view. Can you imagine that on the QE2 or Severn bridges!

The border was very similar to the Thai/Cambodia border. Everyone off the bus to get Cambodian visas and departure cards removed then a short drive through no man's land to the Vietnam border. The bus manager had already got the passports stamped but we had to collect our bags from the bus, carry them through customs, plonk them on a x-ray machine then put them back on board. With 40 of us on board it was a little time consuming but no real hassle. 

Vietnam is a totally different picture to Cambodia. Gone are the stilt houses and the tons of rubbish that lines Cambodian roads. Here the buildings look much better made and tidier. Whether the climate is more benign or they have better irrigation systems is unclear but the fields are much more green with rice growing from soggy paddy fields. The bus was also able to make much faster progress down the well made roads and, no tuk tuks - hundreds and hundreds of scooters but no slow, difficult to overtake tuk tuks. 

One in Saigon things slowed a little in the rush hour but everything seemed a little more structured and orderly - folks even stopped at red lights. Eventually the bus made it to the patch of road masquerading as a bus station and we collected our bags and walked the 200m to our hotel. Several reviewers had warned that the alley the hotel is on looks very dodgy and they are right. Had we arrived in darkness I’m not sure we’d have have the courage to walk down it but actually it leads to a “quiet residential area”, to quote the hotel map. Once checked into a lovely room, although with views into the neighbours flats across the way, Glenn researched online to find an ATM that would permit him to withdraw a useful sum of money, many are restricted, then went to extract the 3,000,000 dong (roughly £100) allowed.

In his absence Yvonne had scoured TripAdvisor for somewhere to eat and found the 4th best rated restaurant in Saigon was just around the corner. Setting off along the very narrow alleys that twisted between shops and houses we eventually hit a road and found the Ban Cha restaurant, luckily with a table free. We looked at the photo card, ticked the paper ordering sheet and sat back to await our food. Within a matter of minutes the various dishes and drinks arrived and we stuffed our noodles, leaves, herbs and meat into the soup, stirred it around then began fishing them out with chopsticks. We had struck lucky first night with one of the most famous Vietnamese dishes, Ban Cha! Then it was on to the bananas in green rice, dunked in chocolate, which we ate with our fingers. All good fun and extremely tasty and at only 173,000 dong - about £5.50 - it looks like the 3,000,0000 dong may go a long way!