Party Time

Simon's Guesthouse #2, Phnom Penh

Our 'direct' bus to Ho Chi Minh City turned out to involve a 4.30am (having boarded at 6.30pm) stop-off and change of bus in Nha Trang for 3 hours, although by the time the driver had taken multiple backhanders from locals flagging us down at the roadside and sleeping in the already narrow aisles between the three columns of double-decker berths a change of scenery wasn't entirely unwelcome. We sat on the beach and ate fresh baguettes with Laughing Cow (applied with a penknife - thank you to the donors) as very-early-morning Tai Chi went on all around.

Twelve hours after re-boarding, and 25 hours since our original departure, we arrived at last in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) where we stayed for two nights doing very little other than loafing around, eating and drinking, and planning our route through the Mekong Delta. We eschewed the standard 3-day tour package in favour of an independent trip comprising a night each in three or four delta towns as we made our way towards the Cambodian border. We felt delighted with our tenacity when we arrived in Ben Tre, the first of these, after a two-hour bus ride (by this stage little more than a blink) and checked into a pleasant if somewhat soulless hotel run by and mainly for the Communist Party of Vietnam. Our mood improved still further as we asked the tourist office how easy it was to get a bus to Vinh Long (answer: very, via My Tho; although there are also tourist buses at 8am and 1pm) and spent an afternoon trotting round the town.

The next morning we dutifully took the bus to My Tho and asked for the next bus to Vinh Long, only to be told there was no such bus, and that we had to get a taxi instead. We still had time to go back to Ben Tre and get the 1pm tourist bus of which we had been told, so we turned around and got dropped off "down the road" from the bus station. Having walked 20 minutes up this road and 20 minutes back down it we came to doubt the existence of this bus station, gave up, and decided to check back into the Party hotel and try again tomorrow.

Apologies for the extent detail given here, but in order for me not to look pathetic (any more than is unavoidable) it is necessary to furnish you with some more. A return to the tourist office that afternoon indicated that the bus station in Ben Tre is not where Lonely Planet thinks it is, nor where we were shown by the conductor of day's second bus. Undaunted, we got to the bus station at 7am the next morning, in ample time for the 8am tourist bus, only to be told that there are no tourist buses from Ben Tre, but there was a local bus at 8.30. We waited around for 45 minutes until being approached by a man telling us that the 8.30 local bus had been cancelled for an unspecified reason; the next one was at 1.45pm. We took a taxi back to the riverside in a forlorn attempt to find the English-speaking man we had met in a cafe there the day before who had tried to persuade us to travel two-and-a-half hours, with all luggage, on the back of his motorbike instead of in an air-conditioned bus, for five times the price, although by now this was a trivial consideration. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this proved a fruitless endeavour.

We decided to cut our losses, admitted defeat, and headed back to Ho Chi Minh City, from where we caught a bus over the border to Phnom Penh. To be leaving Vietnam so abruptly was a shame, but having so thoroughly enjoyed the previous two-and-a-half weeks I didn't want to let further, similar experiences sour my memory of this fascinating country, to which I hope to return and which I would recommend to anyone.

First full day in Cambodia today (it is hotter than the mainly coastal Vietnam), and to cheer ourselves up we visited the Genocide Museum (a converted school used as a prison and torture house during the Khymer Rouge regime) and the Killing Fields. These were two of the most affecting places I've been - the image I will be unable to shift is that of cupboards full of unidentified skulls.

The Cambodian currency is called the Riel. This offers comparatively few comic possibilities.

Over.