One Night in Chao Doc

We spent one night in Chau Doc, at the edge of Vietnam, and it was by far the sketchiest place we've been. Swarmed by the legion of taxi and moto drivers at the bus station, we stuck up our noses at their ridiculous offers and donned our ponchos to venture out in the rain for better prices and less obnoxious people. One of the moto drivers ran into my leg and left a nice tire mark on the back of my calf. We were bothered so incessantly by one driver and he offered such an incredibly low price that we consented to a ride to our hotel. It was a good choice because the center of town was quite a ways off, and without a ride, it would have taken us forever to get there. We each had a driver and we kept our eyes on one another until we reached a guest house which wasn't at all the one we had asked for. Finally, we had gotten to experience the too-well-known gig of being taken somewhere that gives the drivers commission. We were very loud in our complaints and they offered to take us now to the destination we had requested. "Don't waste my time," I told my driver, "or you don't get paid at all." They brought us to the hotel which was cheap and clean, and we were glad to finally be at the border.

We walked down dark, dirty alleyways in search of cash and water and kept our eyes open for the night market. We returned to our hotel immediately, and there we enjoyed dinner at a floating restaurant, held up in the water on short stilts and accessed only by uneven hand-made wooden ramps. We booked our boat for the next day and as we fell asleep, with a request to be woken up early enough for breakfast, Derek fought to kill the mass of gnats that had invaded our room. We slept with a light on that night to keep them drawn away from us...the town was FULL of bugs, everywhere you looked. Really a crummy town. If you go through here, don't stay longer than you have to.

The next day, our internal alarm clocks kicked in, and as is usually the case, we had no clock. No one had woken us, though we had reiterated our request til we were blue in the face, and we threw our stuff together, scared that we'd end up missing the boat and having to remain here another day. Fifteen minutes after we were supposed to get up, a woman opens our door and sticks her head in (our wake up call, we think), and immediately leaves. Not two minutes later, she comes in again (no one knocks...be dressed at all times if there's any way they could have a duplicate key) and in broken Vietnamese yells that I have to get out. I haven't the faintest idea where Derek is, and I'm pissed that the woman would have woken us up and given us only 2 minutes to get out of the room to meet our ride which was 15 minutes early. Derek met me downstairs with bread he had picked up from a street vendor, and we sit to wait for our driver. A man with a cart is asking if we want a ride, which we routinely reply that no, we don't need a driver. Turns out he was our driver, but no one told us and he certainly didn't speak enough English to let us know that we were supposed to go with him. Surrounded by three others with the same vehicle, wanting to take us wherever we wished to go, he blended in so well that it took us five minutes to figure out that we were, in fact, waiting for him.

We met up with a massive group of foreigners in a cafe, where we ordered butter and jam for our dry bread, but we didn't get to use even half as we set off directly, separated from our bags, and walked to the pier. The boat ride went smoothly, and we met some very nice people. We visited a fish farm, which is common in this area set up under the house. We went to a village to visit the Cham people, who are known for towel weaving (the towels are almost the same as all the other scarves around, but they use them as towels) and found them to be very happy and photogenic. Some kids selling waffles rattled off their rehearsed pitch in very monotonous voices, so much so that we wondered if the Cham people might have built robots to look like children to sell their wares.

* Side note -  I have yet to see actual "syrup"...pancakes come with honey, which they call syrup

The ride began very pleasantly. We didn't expect it to take more than a few hours. People along the river waved as we passed, which I thought amazing, since they must see foreigners every day pass by, always taking video and pictures of them in their daily routines (washing clothes, dishes, brushing their teeth, bathing, washing their cattle) and would think after awhile they'd get sick of waving. But they always did. Then, we sat at the border for forever while our visas were worked out by our guide. He also offered to change our money for us, but we were too guarded because we didn't trust his exchange rate and figured we'd trade in town.

Note to fellow travelers - when entering Cambodia from Vietnam, CHANGE YOUR MONEY RIGHT AWAY. No one in Cambodia would take our Dong, so we had $100 in useless currency and still do now. Hindsight is 20/20, naturally, but if the boat driver offers to change your money, take him up on it, if only in this instance. We used US Dollars for everything while in Cambodia (their money is the Riel, but they only use it for 20% of transactions, usually as a replacement for US coin).

It began to pour, so we traveled in a tarp-covered boat, but though this kept the rain out, it made it very stuffy inside and since we were all right on top of the engine, I opted for fresh air and water than to suffocate from the fumes. It was a VERY long rest of the way there...we underestimated our travel time by at least 5 hours. After awhile, sitting on the hard boards and trying to avoid the line of ants running behind you gets very old. When we finally stopped, we weren't in the city center yet, and had to get into a van which dropped us off at a Phnom Penh guest house, where we took the bait and opted to stay because we were tired and hungry. We hadn't eaten almost at all, anticipating getting in early enough for a late lunch, and at 8:30 we headed out to finally fill ourselves up. Vietnam was now behind us, and a very packed week or so in Cambodia was ahead.