Vietnam

We crossed the border of Vietnam on the back of a motorbike. Not something we planned.
We left Kampot, Cambodia, in a tuktuk. A 2,5 hour ride to the border true little villages, watching cambodia people living their life. The little huts along the road, the kids playing, women preparing food, men on mototbikes passing us with a overload of dead pigs on the back of the bike or a complete family (mom, dad and 3 kids in the age of 9 months to 3 year...) all without a helmet on. It is amazing what you see during a 2,5 hour ride.

The plan was to cross the border with the tuktuk and find another tuktuk in Vietnam who would bring us to Ha Tien. But nothing goes how you plan it in Cambodia. About 30 min before we would cross the Vietnam border our tuktuk driver stopped at a little hut where 2 men were standing with each a motorbike. Our driver says to us; " you get out, go on motorbike." And we respond; " That's not possible, have you seen our 4 bags, that doesn't fit on a motorbike!" The driver says; " i no crossing the border, you on motorbike." And that was the end of the discussion. So the motorbike drivers takes our backpacks from the tuk tuk, hands us our little bakpack and puts our big backpacks in between their legs. Gives us a helmet (luckly) and also asks for 10 dollar each to bring us to where we wanna go. This is how they get the most money of tourist, let them think they have a ride to the border and then half an hour before the border say they have to change to motorbike and ask for extra money.. Well it was a fun drive after all. You have to try everything, right??

Crossing the Vietnam border was easy and didn't took long. After the border we had another hour ride on the back of the motorbike to a little town called Ha Tien. What we read in the lonely planet it was an okey town and there was a ferry terminal to an island, Phu Quoc. We told the drivers the hotel we wanted to go to, but as usual they brought us to a different hotel where they probly get comission or something. And telling them this is not the hotel we want to go to suddenly they don't understand enough english. It's funny how things works here. But the hotel was okay and not that expensive so for one night good enough. Atleast that was the plan untill we found out that all the boats going to the island were full because of some holyday weekend in Vietnam. All the locals going away for a nice weekend. The first 3 travelagents told us that we had to spend 3 days in the little town that everywhere you went smelled like tried fish. Not something we were planning to do. We almost stopped searching for another travelagent telling us the same story when we saw a travelagent that had tickets for the afternoon boat the next day. Sitting infront of the office we saw it was across the street from the hotel we wanted to stay in. If only the motorbikedrivers listend to us, it would have shaved us a lot of walking around and frustrations. But i guess thats what traveling is in these type of countries.


The next day a little boat looking like a coffin flaoting took us with 150 others in small seats to the island of Phu Quoc. Arriving there the dock was filled with motorbike and tuktuk drivers who started yelling even before the first people got of the boat welkomed us. They where so close to the little plank we had to balance us and our bags on that it suprised me no one ended up in the water. Lucky we had a minibus waiting for us to bring us to the west of the island to our hotel. So we didn't had to bargain with 20 men to get the best price and nicest ride.

We stayed in a recently opened hotel owned by a Dutch guy and his Vietnamese wife. They both spoke dutch so that was nice.

The Dutch brother and sister who we met on the boat to the island stayed there to and we ended up spending a lot of time together. Sitting on the rooftop patio drinking and eating untill sometimes 1 o'clock in the morning. The day we left we found out that normally the patio is closed at nine at night, oeps..... But we had fun times.

During the day Vern and i exploired the island on a motorbike. You could drive to the north for the day or to the south. I like the drive to the south the best because the roads where better and you drove along the beach most of the time or true the forrest, nice and cool. We stopped a lot to have a snack, snorkel, sit on the beach and swim or visited a locale fishermen in his hut in the ocean. To get to his hut you had to balance on a narrow bamboo pole above the water. Really cool. The guy didn't speak any english and our Vietnamees isn't wonderful so we didn't speak but he showed us his catch, snails.
I loved it that the locals were so friendly and that we saw abit of how they life.

Driving to the north you would drive true little fishervillages where they had a lot of dried squid lying along the road that had this awfull smell. I couldn't stand it, but Vern didn't mind it so much. Everytime we drove true a little village the kids would come run to the roads and yell; "hello, hello, hello, hello, hello, hello...." untill they didn't see us anymore. Really funny.

We drove around on our bikes for 5 days and the last day i was reminded why i didn't like motorbikes. Driving back from the north towards the hotel we drove on this dirt road that was okay for the most part of it, but sometimes there would be a big puthole you had to avoid. Vern was driving a head of me just before a curve in the road i didn't saw a puthole on time so i had to drive true it. No problem i thought because i wasn't going that fast, except for that rock lying in the middle of the puthole that made my wheel turn left and the only thing left to do next was falling to my left. The first thing that hit the dirt was my left knee followed by a nice role over my right shoulder ending up back on my feet again. As soon as i realised i would fall i yelled for Vern but because of the noise of the motor he didn't hear me and disappeared around the curve. By the time he realised i didn't followed him anymore he turned and saw me standing next to my bike hidding dirt of my shirt. After me telling what happened and he wurried if i was okay he looked at the bike and tried to start it, luckly it did start and still worked okay. He helped me rinse my knee wound and offcourse took a few photo's.
A few locals driving by stopped to see if everything was okay and probly thought: " oh no, another tourist not nowing how to drive...".
Well i just got the vietnam tatoo as everyone calls it, i mean every tourist. The only good thing about this tatoo is that its not for there for life!

My knee hurted for about 2 weeks and Vern carried my big backpack from time to time, he's a real sweetheart. My man!!!! It changed our travelplan true Vietnam a little bit but not to bad. We didn't do a homestay in the Mekong Delta what i kind of really wanted and Vern not really so that worked out okay for him.

After hanging around the island for a week we headed towards the Mekong Delta. We took a little nicer and bigger boat back to the mainland to a town called Rach Gia.

The town was simeler to Ha Tien, and we spended only 1 night here. The next day we took a bus to Can Tho. A nice town in the middle of the Mekong Delta.

More about our adventures there in a next stories. I want to publish this before i have to rewrite it a third time because internet keeps shutting down and not saving my story. So sorry for wrong spelling and stuff but no time to re read my story.