Good Night Cambodia, Good Morning Vietnam!

The Cambodian border checkpoint

We are sad to leave Cambodia, as both Daron and I agree it has been our favorite Southeast Asia country so far.  The people are so warm and friendly, always smiling, and so curious.  Many of them speak good English, which made traveling and communicating that much easier.  The Khmer language was difficult for us – we tried and tried to learn how to say “hello” in Khmer but never mastered that one.  “Thank you” in Khmer was easier (thankfully!) and we used that one often.  Everywhere we went we saw evidence of the dark days of Cambodia, from destroyed buildings to landmine victims.  The saddest part of the war is the thought that Cambodians were killing Cambodians.  After the Vietnamese liberated them, many of the Khmer Rouge soldiers just faded back into the population, with no justice to be had.  It was such a giant step backwards for the country, from which they are only starting to recover.  As annoyed as I was by the beggars and peddlers, it was hard not to look at them and think of what they and their country had been through (which is probably why it works so well for them!). 

Me waiting at the Cambodian border office

Crossing into Vietnam was an unexpected adventure.  We bought bus tickets to take us from Kep, Cambodia to Can Tho, the largest Vietnamese city in the Mekong Delta.  They were expensive as far as bus tickets in Asia go ($18 each), but we were told it was a nice bus.  We were picked up at our hotel in Kep in the morning by a minivan – little did we know it would be the best vehicle we would be in that day!  The minivan took us to the small border town of Ha Tien, on the Cambodian side, where we left the minivan and were shuffled onto motorbikes – one motorbike had my backpack in front of the driver, then the driver, then me, then Daron (yep, all on one bike!).  The second motorbike had just the driver and Daron’s big backpack.  We went a short distance to the border where we disembarked and completed our departure tasks for Cambodia, got back on the motorbikes and went the short distance to the Vietnamese side.  We already had our visas, so they only looked over our passports, gave us a stamp each, and let us go on our merry way.  Back on the motorbikes, we were taken a loooong way.  I’m glad Daron and I were on the same motorbike, otherwise I would be more worried than I already was.  Our destination turned out to be the local bus station.  Our motorbike driver paid the bus driver for our bus ticket - I’ll bet the ticket cost about $3 each!  We could have done this ourselves for much, much less than the $18 we spent for a “nice” bus, which of course was not the bus we got.  No nice cushy bus with air-conditioning, unless you count open windows as A/C! 

Crossing into Vietnam

The local bus we were on picked up and dropped off passengers all along the way.  Eventually we made it to Chau Doc, another large city in the Mekong Delta area that was NOT where we were headed.  The bus stopped on some random street corner (not a bus station), where they told everyone to get out because that was the end of the line.  It was total chaos after that, as the bus driver and his wife flagged down two motorbikes and told them to take us somewhere.  While being pushed onto the back of a motorbike, I took one final look at Daron on the back of his motorbike, hoping it wouldn’t be the last time I would see him!  A helmet was pushed onto my head as the young woman who drove the motorbike I was on took off!  I felt like I was in some sort of racecar video game, as we swerved in and out of traffic consisting of other swerving motorbikes, cars, and busses!   My heart was pounding!  We ended up at some sort of office where lots of people were waiting for something, and three people at desks were yelling into their phones and at each other.  They seemed so angry, and both Daron and I wondered if they were mad at us for some reason, but I think that’s just the way they are, loud and boisterous.  To top it all off, not one person there spoke English.  The woman motorbike driver talked to the desk people on our behalf; eventually we figured out we were there to buy tickets for transportation to Can Tho.  We had to pay $1 each to the daredevil motorbike drivers who got us there, and the transport to Can Tho cost us $6 each, EVEN THOUGH we had already paid $18 each to get there from Cambodia!  Erg! 

Our "fancy" local bus

Soon a large, very nice Mercedes minivan backed into the transportation office and everybody got in.  We were the last to board, as we were still sorting out our tickets, and ended up sitting on tiny plastic stools placed on the floor alongside the bench seats.   We were squished even tighter than sardines!  There were at least 25 people squeezed into that van, and we kept picking up people along the way!  The newcomers had to stand in the back of the van behind the last bench seat, up against the back door.  As we went along, people got off, people got on, and by 7pm that night we made it to the bus stop at Can Tho.  Phew!  The motorbike drivers swarmed us as we exited the minivan (we’re starting to get used to this part).  We were so tired we didn’t even bargain the price to take us to the hotel we had picked out ($5).  After another crazy ride swerving through traffic and barreling through intersections with traffic headed right towards us, I was never so happy to reach our hotel.  Both of us were tired and relieved to reach our destination, even though it was not the way we thought we were going to arrive.  We both slept like babies that night. 

Daron in the bus, before we knew how the day would go!

Interesting facts about Vietnam: 

• The population of Vietnam is 90 million.  It is the 14^th most populous country in the world. 
• Vietnam is a young country, with 65% of the population under the age of 30 (there was a population boom after the war). 
• Vietnam currently has a two-child policy.  About 17 percent of families have more than two children, mainly because they have two daughters and want a son.  The Vietnamese have a long standing belief that sons must care for their parents in old age and carry on the family name.  
• Life expectancy here is 73 for women and 68 for men (the guys have all that stress from carrying on the family name, etc!).
• 85% are Buddhist; 8% are Christian; 3% Cao Dai; 4% other
• The country’s land area is 127,243 square miles, slightly larger than New Mexico.  It has 2,300 miles of coastline and 2,400 miles of land borders.
• Vietnam’s official name is the “Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”  It is a single-party constitutional republic – in other words, a communist government.
• In 1986 Vietnam’s government approved broad economic reforms, opening up the country to foreign investment, and thus improving Vietnam’s business climate.
• In 1994 the U.S. lifted the economic embargo that had been in place since the 1960’s.  Full diplomatic relations have been restored and Bill Clinton was the first U.S. president to visit north Vietnam in 2000.
• Vietnam is the world’s second largest exporter of rice (after Thailand). 

And the most important one: 

• Facebook is banned in Vietnam!  The ban started in late 2009, although there are ways to get around it from what I read on the internet (I’m too lazy to try to figure it out!).  The government never officially stated that it was banning FB, but earlier in 2009 Vietnam’s government tightened restrictions on blogging, banning political discussion and restricting postings to personal matters. Several bloggers were arrested for writing about politically sensitive subjects (I guess I won’t be changing the name of my blog to “Criticisms of Vietnam’s Government” anytime soon!).