CHAU DOC (that's for Brad and Chelsi!)

At the station in CHAU DOC, we jumped on two pedal xe lois, and headed for the centre of town.  Along the way, a guy on a moto drove alongside me, telling me all about his guest house, and how we should get the slow boat, not the fast boat, to Phnom Penh.  I'm not sure why he was trying to sell us the cheaper one, but we agreed to look at his guest house.  It wasn't that nice, and was a bit pricey, so told him we didn't want to stay there.  So of course he had a sister hotel, and would we look there?  We did, and it was fine, and quite cheap, so we just agreed to it (at that point I hadn't noticed the gaping hole in the bathroom door).  I was kinda annoyed with myself for having just given in, since I was sure there were probably nicer places elsewhere, grrrrrr.

We headed out for lunch, and found a market on the waterfront, where we got more great bbq pork, and it was only 10,000 dong - like 30p!!  After that, we decided we fancied sitting down somewhere for a cuppa, so we found a hotel and sat in the reception with a coffee and played cards.  I even wrote a postcard to a random Hungarian guy from Thorntree who was a postcard collector and had asked me for one!  We decided to book the fast boat, and headed back to our hotel to do that (our guy had said several times that if we didn't find the boat cheaper anywhere else, we should come back and book with him).  We got there, and there were none left.  We really didn't fancy getting the slow boat, so we headed back into town to see if any other hotel could sell us a ticket for the fast one.  They couldn't.  In the end, we bought a slow boat ticket from the guy in our place, who assured us it was't the tour boat, that we would make no stops till the border, that the first boat would take 3 hours, the second would take 3 hours, and then the bus would take an hour and a half.  Let's see...

After all that stress, it was time for a fruit shake on the corner.  They were delicious!  Larissa got one that was described as a 'custard apple' shake, which was also really good.  We asked the lady (who didn't actually speak any English) which fruit it was, and after much confusion, she eventually understood what we were trying to say, and pointed to a small round fruit that I had never seen before.  Interesting.

I had to change the rest of my Dong to Dollars, so the obvious place to do that seemed to be the bank.  I should have learned from Brad and Chelsi's experience in Saigon.  The bank doesn't sell dollars, and I was directed to the jewellers.  I managed to get a pretty good rate there though, and on the $90 worth we exchanged, we only lost out on 20c - not bad!

I spent a few hours on the net, and then collected a hungry Larissa from the room, and we headed out for dinner.  It was a place from the book, which was evident from all the xe loi guys sitting outside, waiting for all the white people sitting inside.  The food was really good though - it was our last Vietnamese meal, so we shared a hotpot and a claypot - yum!

That night, we made an important discovery - where mosquitoes are made!   Apparently it's in the room we stayed in.  There were none of them in there when we went to bed, but we both spent the night being eaten alive, and scratching madly.  At about 3.30, Larissa woke up enough to realise that we needed to do something, rather than lie there half asleep scratching our skin off.  We sprayed loads of deet, but it didn't seem to do any good.  The next morning we were covered.  I was glad to get out of there.

There was no electricity in the morning, so we couldn't get another fruit shake!  We got a xe loi to the pier, where we met the rest of the group on the TOUR boat - strike one.  We all headed off, and got on the boat, which was pretty small, and definitely slow.  The first stop (strike two) was at a fish farm, and then another one at a Cham village.

After three hours we were nowhere near the border, and didn't arrive there until five hours after setting off (strike three).  We had some food, and then went to have out bags scanned.  But the electricity was still out, so they decided not to bother with that.

On the Cambodian boat, things didn't move much faster.  It was quite a nice boat ride though, and it was brilliant to see all the river life, from bringing the cattle down to the water for a drink and a wash, to seeing an entire village in the river, all sudded up, but fully clothed, having a wash in the muddy brown water.  The kids are so cute - we must have passed over a hundred of them, and every single one stood on the bank and waved at us.

The boat again wasn't anywhere after three hours, but this bit seemed to go quicker - we played cards, and chatted to Mark and Chrissie from England, and Bella from Sydney.  The boat took five hours in the end - strike four.  I was losing my patience with the guy in my hostel.  Why does everyone need to lie to you??!!  We got off, bought some bread, and then got crammed on to a minivan for the drive to Phnom Penh.