Had an early start today - we jumped in our minibus at 7.30am for the Vietnam border.
When we got to the border, Fon advised that it could take up to 2 hours to pass through immigration. She also warned, that as Vietnam is a communist country and as we would be arriving at lunch time, we may have to wait for the officers to finish their lunch before we’d get seen!
Luckily this didn’t happen and the whole process was pretty quick. As instructed by Fon, we put a $1 in our passport along with our arrival forms. We didn’t realise until later that this was actually a way of speeding up the process - we're so glad Fon knew about this!
When we were over the border and back on the bus we were instantly hit by the poor conditions of the road – it was such a bumpy bus journey for the next 2 hours.
Fon also advised it would take a little longer due to the speed limit in Vietnam being only 40KM an hour.
We were arrived at our hotel in Chau Doc around 4pm and were greeted with a cold cup of ginger type tea, which tasted interesting (it’s a common drink in Vietnam).
Fon had also mentioned that we may noticed a swift change of pace in Vietnam in comparison to Cambodia – it’s meant to be a lot noisier (mainly with traffic) and just generally more hectic. She also mentioned that the Vietnamese tend to shout at you when they talk, not because they’re being aggressive or anything, just because they are used to speaking over traffic. We didn’t find this in Chau Doc at all, in fact, we thought it was more chilled out than the last few places we’d stayed in.
As Vietnam is a communist country, we discovered a couple of its quirks when we arrived – firstly, you have to leave your passport at reception when you check in (so you have to remember to ask for it when you check out), Facebook is “unofficially” banned here and...they do not have a McDonalds anywhere in the country (not essential, but just a funny fact we discovered online).
In the evening, we joined a few others from the group on a motorbike tour around town. We each got our own driver, so we were just balancing on the back, taking in the views.
We went up the top of a local mountain to watch the sunset and were surprised to find a small shop selling beers. So we sat for a couple of hours, just chilling out in some hammocks, taking in the sunset with some Saigon beer.
Scooting around on the motorbikes was a great way to see the town and the people - when we past the locals, they smiled and shouted hello (the kids were especially excited to see us). It was amazing to see the long lines of rice and chillies drying at the side of the road too!
On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a Chinese temple for a look around. It was a really beautiful building and surprisingly we were the only tourists around.
We ended the evening with dinner in a local restaurant, down by the river. It was a nice little place that seemed to move from side to side every now and then due to it being on the water! We were treated to some distant carrieoke singing from a nearby bar (apparently there were two weddings on).
A funny thing happened at dinner which really shows the lovely nature of the Vietnamese people – because they were out of a particular starter for one member of our group, they offered us a free riverboat ride back along the canal as an apology! It was a lovely way to end the evening,
When we got to the border, Fon advised that it could take up to 2 hours to pass through immigration. She also warned, that as Vietnam is a communist country and as we would be arriving at lunch time, we may have to wait for the officers to finish their lunch before we’d get seen!
Luckily this didn’t happen and the whole process was pretty quick. As instructed by Fon, we put a $1 in our passport along with our arrival forms. We didn’t realise until later that this was actually a way of speeding up the process - we're so glad Fon knew about this!
When we were over the border and back on the bus we were instantly hit by the poor conditions of the road – it was such a bumpy bus journey for the next 2 hours.
Fon also advised it would take a little longer due to the speed limit in Vietnam being only 40KM an hour.
We were arrived at our hotel in Chau Doc around 4pm and were greeted with a cold cup of ginger type tea, which tasted interesting (it’s a common drink in Vietnam).
Fon had also mentioned that we may noticed a swift change of pace in Vietnam in comparison to Cambodia – it’s meant to be a lot noisier (mainly with traffic) and just generally more hectic. She also mentioned that the Vietnamese tend to shout at you when they talk, not because they’re being aggressive or anything, just because they are used to speaking over traffic. We didn’t find this in Chau Doc at all, in fact, we thought it was more chilled out than the last few places we’d stayed in.
As Vietnam is a communist country, we discovered a couple of its quirks when we arrived – firstly, you have to leave your passport at reception when you check in (so you have to remember to ask for it when you check out), Facebook is “unofficially” banned here and...they do not have a McDonalds anywhere in the country (not essential, but just a funny fact we discovered online).
In the evening, we joined a few others from the group on a motorbike tour around town. We each got our own driver, so we were just balancing on the back, taking in the views.
Scooting around on the motorbikes was a great way to see the town and the people - when we past the locals, they smiled and shouted hello (the kids were especially excited to see us). It was amazing to see the long lines of rice and chillies drying at the side of the road too!
On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a Chinese temple for a look around. It was a really beautiful building and surprisingly we were the only tourists around.
We ended the evening with dinner in a local restaurant, down by the river. It was a nice little place that seemed to move from side to side every now and then due to it being on the water! We were treated to some distant carrieoke singing from a nearby bar (apparently there were two weddings on).
A funny thing happened at dinner which really shows the lovely nature of the Vietnamese people – because they were out of a particular starter for one member of our group, they offered us a free riverboat ride back along the canal as an apology! It was a lovely way to end the evening,
Next stop tomorrow – Ho Chi Min City
