One scam after another (Jan. 28/09 - Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam)

Turns out, arranging out tour was too easy, as we ended up getting ripped off. For some reason, that became the theme of the day, and by the end of it we were completely fed up with people's dishonesty here. It started off fine, as a boat captain showed up at 7am as promised and led us down to a narrow longtail boat with just enough room for the four of us, as promised. This is supposed to be the best place in the delta to see the floating markets, where each day people crowd the river in their little wooden boats to buy and sell fresh fruits and veggies. It ends around noon, so we were glad to be heading there early enough to catch the action as the sun came up. Also part of the tour was a float down some smaller, winding channels past fruit plantations, mangrove forests, and rural countryside. The main river channel was several hundred metres wide, and the banks were lined with everything from dumpy houses on stilts to hotels, restaurants, and ship building yards. It was late and we were tired last night when we signed up for this tour, so none of us could really remember the places we were supposed to be going to or how far it was between them. We started to wonder what was up when we turned around in the main channel after only passing one boat full of pineapples and another one full of watermelons... but we then turned off into a smaller channel so maybe the market was over in another part of the river. We puttered for over two hours through twisting channels bordered by banana palms and semi-rural houses built out of sticks and scrap metal before we finally decided to consult the trusty Lonely Planet. Sure enough, it said that the main floating market, which we were certain is the one we were supposed to see, was only a one hour boat ride from Can Tho. But we stayed optimistic and thought that maybe there was either another market or a scenic way to get there. Well, turns out the answers to that are no and no. We had tried to ask the driver several times, several ways, if the market was ahead - and he kept saying yes. We have learned that they always say yes and they always nod whether they know what you're asking or not. When the driver eventually came into a wider channel and turned around, we suspected that we had been screwed. A boat like ours carrying a couple Americans passed us going the other way, so we asked them if they had seen a market that way. Nope, there was no market today. It's closed for New Years. Yes, we had been screwed. The dink that sold us the tour was quick to take our money before we figured it out, and he conveniently forgot to mention that the floating market tour would be just a six hour semi-boring trip through a maze of river channels. Needless to say, we were not impressed.

It was interesting, at least, to get a feel for the delta and what people's lives on it are like. More than anything, we were pretty disgusted at the filthy state the river had degraded to. People were washing dishes in the same filthy water that is clogged with garbage and sewage - we saw floating dirty diapers, industrial waste, and a dead dog just in a span of a few minutes. To top it all off, each house has a little outhouse built on stilts over the water with a hole in the floor. How all these people aren't sick from disease is beyond me!

One thing that had us totally disoriented too was the fact that we seemed to always be moving downstream - never up. Even when we turned around and were eventually passing spots we recognized from the way down, we were still going with the current! So we figure that even this far from the ocean, the delta must be tidally influenced such that rivers flow south during an outgoing tide and north during an incoming tide. Bizarre but makes sense I guess? Anyway, we made it back to town after six hours of seeing everything but the only reason we stopped in Can Tho in the first place.

We wanted to continue to Ho Chi Minh City today, so we asked the hotel receptionist about taking a bus this afternoon. She called the station and confirmed that busses were running, and the price was 80,000 dong (about $5) but it might be 90 or 100,000 since the prices go up a bit during the holidays. She also was very clear that a 'bus taxi' would come get us, like yesterday, and that it was included in the price. Well, a regular private car taxi showed up, and it was obvious that it wasn't affiliated with the bus company. There was a metre on the dash though, so no need to negotiate a price beforehand. Or, they could tell us when we get out at the bus station that they don't use the metre (which read 18,000 dong for our trip) and that the price was 80,000 dong. What a crook - if I were the one paying I would've thrown 18,000 at him and walked away. (I'm not counting, but that must be at least scam #3 for the day?) The bus depot was crammed full of busses and minibusses headed to various places, but when we asked, we were told that no regular busses were going to Ho Chi Minh today. When we asked how much the minibus was, the girl wrote down 140,000 dong. Ken pointed at the sign on the wall behind her that said the price was 105,000. Nice try. Still, that was almost double the price of the regular bus, but we were told by a staff member who spoke good english that it was an express bus (meaning it doesn't stop to pick up passengers) and that the four of us would have the two empty bench seats (for three people each) to ourselves. It was leaving right away, so we decided to go for it. Big mistake...

The driver turned out to have a death wish. He basically laid on the horn the whole way, pulled out into oncoming traffic to pass cars already going over 100km an hour on a city street, pulling back over into a field of motorbikes going half his speed, swerving, slamming on his brakes, talking on his cell phone, and even slipping in behind an ambulance that was racing for a hospital to ride in its car-free wake behind it. He almost slammed into it twice. We rode white-knuckled the whole way, praying we would make it there alive and swearing off minibusses for the rest of our trip. We passed three recent accidents on the three hour death trip, and all of them involved minibusses and crumpled motorbikes. Even with car parts and helmets scattered across the road, he just laid on his horn and swerved around it.

To make matters worse, it became obvious pretty fast that we were definitely not going to have as much room as they had promised. The first time he pulled over to the side of the highway, three people and a baby climbed in and squished into the back row with our bags. A while later, he let three girls on, then two more, then three guys (all with bags of course). Our semi-comfortable three person seats were each crammed with four people, and at last count there were 21 people riding in this 15 passenger van. As if the drive wasn't bad enough, one girl was puking the whole way since she had to ride in the sliding door well. And then a squawking chicken fell out of someone's purse.

Somehow, we made it to Ho Chi Minh City alive, and we couldn't decide whether to kiss the ground or kick the bus driver in the nuts on our way out. We haggled once again with a cab driver to take us downtown, and he only managed to hit one motorbiker during the drive. Ho Chi Minh, or Saigon as the locals still call it, looked very much like Singapore in the modern downtown district, with big malls and glitzy lights - only with way more motorbikes. We bee lined it to the backpacker area called Pham Ngu Lao, where little hotels, cafes, and bars are crammed into narrow streets. There were more travellers out and about here than we'd seen on our whole trip! A lot of the hotels were still full in the wake of the New Year holidays, so it took four tries to find a room that wouldn't break our budget. Our first order of business was dinner, as we hadn't eaten since breakfast. The Quebec couple had eyed an Italian restaurant on the way in, so we joined them and sat down for a nice dinner of homemade pasta. Except that they didn't have any pasta, so everyone ordered something else from the 14 page menu. Turned out that the pizza and burgers were great, but the risotto turned out to be a dry chunk of chicken with terryaki sauce on a pile of dry white rice. Blech. So much for going Italian! It was a fitting end to a crappy day. Rant over.

Smokers to the left of me, smokers to the right... (Jan. 27/09 - Can Tho, Vietnam)

Thankful that the ocean was nice and calm for our three hour boat trip back to the mainland, we boarded the boat and hoped it wouldn't be too uncomfortable. I guess we can't luck out every time! Our assigned seats were at the very back of the boat in a tiny room crammed with about 30 people right behind the engine room. Since everyone and their dog (literally!) were heading home after the New Year, the boat was crammed full. The tiny outdoor stern deck was crowded with people's motorbikes making the trip too, but Ken managed to claim a breezy spot in the shade for the whole trip. He actually ended up dog sitting two puppies that had been stuffed into bags, one of which only had a small hole for air - completely cruel - and the poor things understandably screeched the whole time except for when Ken was petting them. I was stuck inside, where it was hot and almost claustrophobic since the windows were totally blocked by motorbikes strapped to the outside of the boat. Not surprisingly, the outside deck was popular with chain smoking old men, and apparently the "no smoking" signs inside didn't mean anything since I had to choke on it for the whole trip thanks to a couple guys who went through at least a pack in the three hour trip. To top it all off, the engines were deafeningly loud and the floor vibrations were so strong that it actually hurt my feet. The optimist in me was just happy that the water wasn't rough!

We pulled into Rach Gia at 4pm and teamed up with a couple from Quebec to figure out how to get to Can Tho, on the Mekong delta, hopefully today. A mini bus was leaving at 6:30pm, so we bought tickets and found a little cafe for dinner. Between the staff's nonexistant english and our nonexistant Vietnamese, we managed to figure out that "com ga" was rice and chicken, so that would be dinner. The waitress girls were very curious about our little bottle of hand sanitizer that we passed around before eating, and they were totally amused when all four of us pulled identical bottles out of our bags! Definitely a traveler's best friend!

It was dark by the time we pulled out of the station 40 minutes late, but it was still interesting to watch the world go by out the window. Pretty much the entire 3 hour drive to Can Tho was past shops and cafes along both sides of the road like one never ending town, punctuated now and then with bridges over the many branches of the delta. Eventually we made it, finding a riverfront hotel on the first try. This is apparently the place to see the floating markets of the Mekong, so we haggled with a guy at the hotel desk who wanted to take us out on the delta tomorrow. That was easy!

Incense and red flags (Jan. 26/09 - Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam)

For our final day on the island, we wanted to do a bit more exploring on the motorbike since we had only seen part of the island so far. It's the first day of the new year for the locals, so the hotel gave us both lucky red envelopes at breakfast, red satin flags with the country's signature yellow star are flying everywhere you look, the smell of incense fills the air as it burns alongside offerings of fresh fruit, and everyone waves happily, shouting "Happy New Year!" as we drove past. Oh, and almost all the stores are closed, which made the task of finding somewhere to get gas rather challenging. With a better map this time, we decided to go north to check out the village of Bai Thom at the north end of the island. Our map turned out to be pretty misleading, as we ended up on a little dirt alley dodging cows on the route that the map said was the main road out of town. Soon we were pointed in the right direction and zipping along the gravel road. 28km of forested roads later, we emerged at Bai Thom, which turned out to be not much more than a couple roadside shops and a cluster of homes. The map seemed to show a road traversing the north end of the island that would supposedly put us back at our awesome beach from the other day, which sounded like the perfect way to spend the afternoon. As luck would have it, half way there we spotted a sign to a beachside resort that conveniently had a seafood restaurant! It was deja vu, but perfect timing. We followed the signs along a rough little road for a few kilometers, and then sure enough, emerged at the beach with a group of monks who had come for a New Year's picnic on the sand. We had some spicy grilled sea snails (like scallops) and veggies and then hit the road to make a bee line for the beach. We claimed the same spot as before and enjoyed the peace of the warm wind and waves until we had to head back to town to return the motorbike by 5pm. It was kind of entertaining driving back actually, as we passed lots of big family gatherings where people were still celebrating the new year - complete with three seperate people we saw squatting beside their motorbikes, puking into the bushes. A full day of drinking in the sun will do that to you!

Back at our bungalow, we scrubbed the streaky orange fake tan off from the dusty gravel roads and wandered down the beach as the sun made its daily plunge into the ocean. There's something about walking home along the beach by headlamp, with the waves washing over your feet, that makes you really not want to leave a perfect little spot like this!

Under da sea (Jan. 25/09 - Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam)

Today we got a taste for Vietnam from below the waves. Since tomorrow is the Lunar New Year, the dive shops are closed, so they were going to take out more people today than they normally would - 14 to be exact! We groaned at the thought of 14 people diving in a group... that will be a mess! But it turned out that only five of us were diving, two were doing Discover Scuba, a few more were snorkelling, and the rest were just along for the boat ride. These guys had the best dive boat ever - huge, wooden hull with two big tables, benches, head, sun deck, and a full on kitchen! Luckily, the water was nice and calm for the hour long boat ride upu to Doi Moi Island (Turtle Island), which turned out to be right offshore from the beach we were on yesterday.

The bottom was scattered with coral heads of various shapes and sizes, decorated with hard and soft corals, gorgonians, and a variety of fish (though mostly small). The visibility wasn't very good (about 30 feet, although that would be great at home!) and the divemaster tended to swim so fast that it was almost hard to keep up with him! We really prefer to take it slow and have the chance to actually see all the stuff you would otherwise swim over... but not knowing where we were going, we had no choice but to stick with him. There were some interesting flatworms and nudibranchs, lots of urchins, big schools of colourful little fish, and even a small cuttlefish that was quick to squirt us with ink before zipping away. We stayed down for 20 minutes after the group ascended, which gave us a chance to poke around and see some stuff. Despite ascending exactly where the group did, we surfaced at least 500m from the boat. The captain spotted us and was nice enough to come pick us up, saving us from a long swim. For the second dive, we motored over to another little islet called Mon Tay Island (Nail Island), just a few kilometers south. The water is so shallow (max 30 feet) that we were back in the water after only a 35 minute surface interval. Some weird white sea cucumbers were seemingly taking over the reefs, as they literally covered the coral heads and were so densly packed on some of the barrel sponges that you could barely see the sponge itself. Unlike the bigger sea cucumbers we have seen elsewhere, these ones looked almost like little white snakes. Wierd. Also wierd was the huge Crown of Thorns seastars that we came across. I had heard about these but never seen one - they look like our big sunstars at home, with 18 or more legs but covered with hundreds of thin spiky thorns. These guys are some of the biggest threats to a reef, as they feed on coral and can decimate a substantial area in a matter of weeks.

The boat crew treated us to a great local lunch on the boat before puttering back to the harbour. We did enjoy our dives here, but in all honesty, they didn't live up to the "pristine reefs" and "up and coming dive destination" reviews that we had read. There are a bunch of dive sites at the south end of the island though, so maybe they're better. But it was a great day on the boat, with nice warm water and some interesting sea life, so we're happily waterlogged!

Back at our beachside bungalow, we lounged around for a while, scheming with the guidebook to decide where to go next. At sunset, we found another place to eat dinner on the sand, which is becoming a fabulous daily routine!

p.s. - I think it's noteworthy to add that today I had proof that Ken is a changed man, adapting to life in Asia, as he said all of the following:

1. "I think I need some sunscreen."

2. "That cold shower is going to feel great tonight." and

3. "Please pass the tofu."

"Which way to Cau Can?" (Jan. 24/09 - Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam)

With the freedom of a motorbike, the rumour of remote beaches, and a day with no plans, we set out on what would turn into a day-long adventure. It seems there is no such thing as a decent map of the island, so we grabbed a freebie from one of the resorts. The roads are drawn totally inaccurately, and every other map we saw was just as useless. We knew we wanted to aim for what sounded like a nice unspoiled beach on the north end of the island's west side, so we figured that taking any decent looking left turn to keep us near the water would get us there eventually. (Emphasis on the 'eventually' part!) Our first left turn was at the town's roundabout, but that quickly turned into a bad idea in the form of narrow winding dirt alleys passing between shops, over tiny boardwalks, and between pedestrians and cows. Before we could find a spot to turn around, the path dumped us out onto a paved road, suggesting that it goes somewhere important since only the roads in town are paved. But that too turned out to be a bad idea, as the pavement quickly became a narrow motorbike-width sandy trail winding through a thin deciduous forest. We pressed on for a few minutes, encouraged by the fact that the occasional motorbike would emerge from the other direction. Houses sprung up here and there in the forest, as did graveyards and cows tied to trees. We came across a family standing in their yard, and we took the opportunity to point ahead and ask "Cau Can this way?", naming the beach. They looked at eachother and smiled, and then their little 8 year old son grabbed his dad's bicycle, said "follow me!", and sped off down the trail. He had to keep stopping to wait for us to catch up, as the motorbike would spin out in the deep sand pockets on the trail. We must have followed him for at least 20 minutes, assuming we would turn left and emerge at a beach any minute. Then we rounded a corner just to see the main gravel road ahead of us that we were on yesterday! So we could have gone straight through town and ended up at the same place. But we're starting to become fond of detours, as they add to the adventure and make for a great story later!

The main road carried on for 10km or so before veering left and narrowing, with a few shops and houses bearing New Year's decorations fringing the road. We sensed we were on the right track at least, as we recognized "Cau Can" on some of the signs. The already narrow gravel road narrowed some more and threw in some bumpy sections and arched wood plank bridges spanning a couple minor inlets. Fishing boats were tied up along both edges, painted vibrant turquoise and green. The road got worse and worse, and then we came to a swampy section with a broken culvert that looked too sketchy to attempt. That was enough signs in our books, so we turned around, defeated. But a well worn path we hadn't noticed on the way in took off in a way that looked to be a detour, so we agreed it would be our last try. Sure enough, it was just a short detour that intersected with another major gravel road coming from the east. A sign posted at the corner indicated that Mai Phuong Resort was ahead, and I recognized the name as one from the Lonely Planet that was remote and near a beautiful beach. Onwards!

Sure enough, a lovely stretch of white sand and pounding blue waves fringed the road, but the "seafood restaurant 1km" sign had us push on. Success! With $15 brick bungalows set along a beach with a nice view down the entire west coast of the island, we were relieved to plop down in a beach chair and regain feeling in our butts after the long and bumpy drive. We enjoyed fresh shrimp and coconut juice straight from the fruit and then took the cook's advice to check out the beach just 1km farther up the road, which he said was nice. That turned into the biggest understatement of the year - this beach was miles long, completely clean, with flat sand beneath gengle rolling waves and not a soul in sight. Heaven. Nirvana. Paradise! We swam, we sunned, we snoozed, we watched crabs scurry back and forth across the beach and pretty butterflies landing on the sand. It was such a blissful afternoon.

On the way back, we met a French guy at the last intersection who was also on a motorbike with the same crappy map, so we shared our secret and carried on. We took two wrong turns before finding our way back to the wide gravel road that we hoped would lead right into town. Well, it might have if we had actually stayed on it! Instead, we second guessed ourselves at a junction where the main road seemed to veer east and ended up in a busy corner of town we didn't recognize. Around the next corner was a police roadblock, where two guys in camo sat on plastic chairs with a stop sign, blocking the whole road. We asked "Duong Dong this way?", pointing through behind them, and they shook their heads. Just as we were turning around, they apparently changed their minds and waved us through. They probably just wanted some entertainment, as we quickly realized the reason for the blockade - we were driving through the goddamn market! Swarms of people milled about piles of watermelons and pineapples on the ground, and kids sat square in the middle of the path selling New Years decorations. Hundreds and hundreds of people barely able to walk through the chaos, and here we were trying to drive through it! It was insane - people walked around us and looked at us like we were crazy (fair enough!). Stupid cops. There was definitely no room to turn around, so we were forced to putter our way through and hope it would be over soon. Finally (but not soon enough!), we reached the main road, which put us at the harbour bridge we had driven over several times before. The entrance to the market street was clogged with motorbikes belonging to the shoppers inside, and a group of guys waiting on them for their wives in the market gave us a look of amazement when they saw us emerge from the sea of people on a motorbike! Finally we were on familiar turf, and we made a bee line for somewhere to celebrate with ice cream! We never did find the beach we set out searching for, but we think we found one that was even better. Maybe getting lost is the key to a great adventure?!

As the sun was setting, we joined a British couple that we've been traveling with for a few days for dinner on the beach. Some more fresh seafood and rum cocktails with our toes in the sand, swapping travel stories... the perfect end to what turned out to be a wonderfully memorable day!

Island time (Jan. 23/09 - Phu Quoc Island, Vietnam)

Turns out, the boat was just as they had implied at the office - big, modern, and fast. The interior looked more like an airplane than a boat, but we were pleased to find out how smooth a ride it was - no seasickness this time! Other than the blaring karaoke (what is it with these countries and bad karaoke?!) and frigid air conditioning, the trip was pretty benign. 90 minutes later, we pulled up to a big concrete dock on Phu Quoc Island and snagged a mini van to take us to the west side of the island where all the action is. Since we didn't have anywhere to stay, we let the driver take us to a place that had $15 bungalows on the beach. Of course, we expected dismal rooms, but they were great! Individual bungalows with a hammock on the patio and a fridge full of cold 80 cent Tiger beer, who can complain?!

The island is shaped kind of like a 50km long t-bone steak, with the big part in the north. The whole west side is a long stretch of beach, and the town of Duong Dong sits near its north end. Various hotels line the beach, and ours is located near the south end. To get a feel for the island, we rented a motorbike and set off up the wide gravel road. Signs of upcoming development are everywhere - hotels under construction, roads about to be paved - so we were glad to have come ahead of the mobs. Ken did really well to maneuver through the streets of town on the motorbike, as other motorbikes were zooming in all directions. He quickly mastered the horn and cruised along like a local. We drove north for a while past town before deciding to save the exploring for tomorrow. Lunch was our first priority, as we skipped breakfast in anticipation of a potentially rough ferry ride. Priority #2 was to look into diving. The reefs around this island are apparently still in pristine condition, and so we were eager to check them out for ourselves. Five dive shops were clustered along one stretch of the main drag in town, so we shopped around and then settled on one that will be going to the north end of the island the day after tomorrow, where the visibility is better (compared to the cluster of An Thoi islands in the south).

On our way back to our bungalow, we popped into a few other places along the road to see if there was a better spot or a better deal elsewhere. Turns out that everything else was either full or out of our price range, so we considered ourselves lucky to have ended up where we did on the first try! The beach was calling, so we wandered down and went for a swim. If it weren't for the unfortunate amount of garbage that had washed up on the beach and was floating in the water, it would be pretty much perfect. Even still, a swim in the balmy ocean and lounging in the sand in the shade of the fancy neighbouring resort's cabanas was pretty sweet! We passed out beneath a palm tree and were woken by a Vietnamese woman standing over us, screeching "YOU WANT MASSAGE??" Uh no, I want to sleep, thank you very much! Had I not read about these people's general lack of needing personal space, I would have been pretty freaked out when she reached out and brushed the sand off my leg and then grabbed my hand and said "Ohhhh, need manicure." I think she tried to offer Ken hair removal services before she finally realized what NO meant, and walked away.


The afternoon sun turned an intense shade of red before sinking into the sea. We enjoyed fresh seafood on the beach at an adjacent hotel with our toes in the sand to round off our first day of island time.

Planes, trains, and automobiles... sort of (Jan. 22/09 - Ha Tien, Vietnam)

We were definitely ready to get out of the city. Phnom Penh was a busy, loud, and dirty place. Walking down the street was never an easy process, as sidewalks were usually crammed full of motorbikes parked in front of shops, forcing you to walk on the road and dodge motorbikes flying by in both directions. A couple days ago, we were crossing a major eight-lane boulevard at one of the only traffic lights we had seen. Weaving between stopped cars that had run the red light, we were within four feet from the far curb, when two motorbikes came flying out of nowhere IN THE WRONG DIRECTION! What the hell?! Turns out that the easier way to turn left at an intersection rather than waiting for the left turn signal is to make your way across oncoming traffic and drive along the curb until your corner comes up. And when driving down the road, it seems perfectly ok to simply cross into oncoming traffic's lane if those in front of you are driving too slow - even if there is traffic coming. Intersections are a high speed game of "thread the needle", even across multiple lanes of traffic. Driving at home is going to seem like the safest thing ever after this!

As we boarded the bus this morning bound for Kep in southwestern Cambodia, we recognized a bunch of people taking the same bus who we had previously met while in Phnom Penh, on the boat to Battambang, or even as far away as Siem Reap. It's funny how backpackers tend to travel the same paths - and this works out really well when you meet people going in the opposite direction, as you can trade info and make recommendations about where the others are headed.

Rice fields lined with palm trees stretched all the way to Kampot, where some low mountains started to appear and the turquoise Gulf of Thailand appeared on our right. Kep is a tiny little seaside town that was deserted during the Khmer Rouge raids in the 1970s and the famine that followed, and life has just recently started to resume. Oceanside thatched huts had dozens of hammocks for people to lounge in while dining on Kep's famous fresh caught crab. The town seemed pretty deserted though, so we opted to carry on toward the Vietnam border. Somehow! A tuk-tuk driver agreed to take us there for a fair price, so we piled in and were off. The first half hour was eastbound on a decent paved road, but then we turned south onto a dirt road that I had thankfully read was a shortcut - otherwise, we might have been worried! How much of a time saver, we weren't sure, as the road was riddled with potholes so deep that we had to get out and walk around them once! We drove by villagers' houses and farmsteads, where kids waved hello and cattle grazed at the roadside. After about an hour, the houses and grazing fields were replaced with long thatched sheds and sprawling grids of bare flooded fields. We thought they were more rice paddies, but our driver pulled over to show us that they were actually for harvesting sea salt. Low berms seperate the square fields, which are tamped to densify the soil and then flooded to allow about 6 inches of ocean water in. The pond is left to evaporate, which leaves behind a carpet of sparkling salt crystals. The salt is raked into mounds and bagged for export to Vietnam, just a few kilometers away.

Apparently, the last few kilometers before the border are pretty rough, so our driver had called a couple of his friends with motorbikes to meet us at the end of the "good" part. Each of the drivers balanced our packs between their legs while we climbed on behind them. It was only a few kilometers to the border, where we bailed off and made our way through the customs office on the Cambodian side. Just on the other side of the official flimsy steel gate was the flower-lined welcome sign and towering arch of the Vietnamese border. Since our drivers live right near the border, they are permitted to ferry people back and forth as they please - which is good, because unless you have your own bike or car, this is the only way of crossing the border here! Everything went smoothly, and we were soon zipping down the highway to the Vietnamese town of Ha Tien. Country #12 on our trip list!

Since this border crossing is very new, it is not mentioned in any of the guidebooks, hence the "winging it" theme to today's adventure! We were therefore assuming that the long-running fast ferries from the town of Rach Gia, 100km farther south, were the only way to get to Phu Quoc island. One of the motorbike drivers mentioned a new fast ferry service from Ha Tien, so we had him take us to their ticket office to check it out. The Lonely Planet had warned that the only boats from here to the island are slow fishing boats, and that you should not take them if you value your life! But this new fast ferry looked great in the photos in the office - new and safe - but we had to make the salesgirl promise us that the boat in the picture was the actual boat - otherwise, we weren't going to risk it. So trusting her word, we found a hotel room and hung out for the rest of the day, awaiting the 8am departure tomorrow morning.

For arriving in Ha Tien knowing nothing about the town since it's not covered in our guidebook, we were very impressed! A big market bursting with fresh produce lined the street near our hotel, colourful fishing boats lined the waterfront, and countless little shops and cafes stretched the length of the main drag. A wide promenade borders the ocean, where a massive flower sale was underway as people prepare for the upcoming Lunar New Year. The people were all friendly, and not a single person hassled us. We only spotted two other foreigners, and no english was visible on signs around town. This place has not been on the tourist trail, but we suspect that it will be soon with the new border crossing into Cambodia and the new easy access to Phu Quoc island, which is an upcoming hotspot for beaches and diving. We wandered the town, enjoying the laid back vibe and the pretty sunset. Tomorrow, the beach!

The dark side of Cambodia (Jan. 21/09 - Phnom Penh, Cambodia)

In contrast with the magnificent temples and extravagent royalty that have painted a pretty picture for much of Cambodia's history, the unbelievably tragic genocide that occurred between 1975 and 1978 is equally part of their history. As horrendous as these events were, we wanted to visit the sites where it took place to gain an understanding of what happened here.

The Choeung Ek Memorial at The Killing Fields is located about 15km outside of the city, amongst peaceful fields and quiet stilted houses. This is one of many places in Cambodia where the Khmer Rouge executed hundreds of thousands of innocent civillians - approximately 17,000 people are estimated to have died in this spot alone. Dozens of shallow pits are spread across the shady treed field, which were mass graves that were excavated in 1980 so that the towering pagoda-like memorial, containing some 9000 human skulls, could be constructed in memory of the victims. Some larger pits were mass graves for hundreds of bodies each, and thousands more are believed to be still buried in an area on the east side of the field. The area has been protected with a dyke and is covered by a peaceful and permanent pond. While walking between the graves, shivers went up our spines at the sight of clothing pieces and human bones poking out of the ground. Ironically, the peace of the field was only broken by the occasional burst of laughter from children playing outside the adjacent school.

The Khmer Rouge used a highschool in Phnom Penh as an interrogation facility, which they called Security Office 21 (S-21), where they brought their victims to be questioned, tortured, and sometimes killed. If they weren't killed there, they were taken by the truckload to the Killing Fields. When the insanity was over in 1979 after Vietnam gained control of Phnom Penh, S-21 was converted into the Toul Sleng Genocide Museum, which we visited after the Killing Fields. From the outside, it looks like a regular rundown school, with four three-storey buildings and a courtyard in the middle full of palm trees. The former classrooms, with their checkered floors and cream walls, sometimes still had chalkboards mounted on the walls. Classrooms were used as cells, some where tiny cages were built to contain prisoners, and others where all that stood in the centre of each classroom was a rusty metal bed frame. Some of the beds still were draped with blood-stained mats, and others still had shackles and chains locked to their frames. Most disturbing was the black and white photo hung in each room showing that very bed and a mutilated body that died on it. It was so eerie to be in the same room where such violence took place, over and over again, but the photos of the thousands of victims displayed in another room were just devastating. Men, women, children, and even babies were all victims here. It's hard to believe that this all happened only 30 years ago.

Stepping back outside into the sunshine, it took a minute to regain our composure before climbing back into the tuk-tuk for the ride back to our hotel. We spent the afternoon wandering along the river, window shopping, and enjoying our last afternoon in the city before heading to the beaches of Vietnam tomorrow morning.