Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
Click the above links for now. More to come.
We decided that we should take at least one bus during our trip, so we decided the bus from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) or Saigon. would not be too bad of an option. So, we paid our 7 dollars each and departed the early the next morning. This trip would involve two buses. One bus would take us from Phnom Penh to the border. At that point, they dropped us off at the border and we walked from Bavet, Cambodia to Moc Bai, Vietnam. At that point, we would get on another bus to take us to HCMC.
Neak Luong and the
Vultures
You will see pictures from a town called Neak Luong. This place was
accidentally bombed by the US and they tried to cover it up. There is a
scean about it in the movie
The Killing
Fields.
Neak Luong is on the Mekong and there is no bridge there at the present, so a quick ferry jaunt is required. This place is also home to many beggars who bang on the bus windows while the bus is waiting to board the ferry.Folks selling all sorts of "foods on sticks" is how Lonely Planet puts it.
I thought I was out of the clear when we got on the ferry, but as you can see above, they let the little vultures onto the ferry, and the intense begging continued. You can see in the above pic, they poor guy in this car made the mistake of opening his wallet. However, that gave me time to quick grab a pick while they were not looking. Neak Luong was a strange place I had no real desire to see in person.
The difference between Cambodia and Vietnam
When we arrived in Vietnam it was like a technological wonderland. I really can't describe it better than the pictures above. The Cambodian border post on the left and the Vietnamese boarder post on the right at Bavet/Moc Bai.
