15TH - 17TH NOVEMBER

Woke up thinking about Harry as it was his birthday today and was hoping that his present would have arrived in time and that he would have a great birthday.

Our bus to take us to our boat to Chau Doc in Vietnam was leaving at 8.30 a.m. which meant a lie-in. I never thought in a million years that I would end up classing 8.30 as a lie-in but in Southeast Asia it certainly is and was most welcome! The bus that was to transfer us to the boat would take approximately one and a half hours, a little longer than we had thought but it wasn’t too bad. In fact neither of us thought that the roads were as bad as we had expected, maybe we’re hardened to bad roads after our Tibetan overland journey! The mini-bus seemed to have some kind of tyre problem as the driver had to keep stopping at almost every garage to get it pumped up, so the journey took a little longer than

advertised!. The boat was basic, a true no frills affair but we soon found ourselves whizzing down the river towards the Vietnam border. We were both looking forward to Vietnam but were sorry to be leaving Cambodia after spending only 8 days there, looking back I think we both wished we had spent longer there and maybe checked out the coastal region.

Our boat man gave out all the necessary customs forms and was very insistent that we changed money with him, his explanation being that there was a lot of forged money in Vietnam and his money was good! We declined his offer as he was only willing to exchange fairly large amounts of cash saying he didn’t have any small change - sounded dodgy! We had dollars and these seem to be accepted everywhere, so we thought we’d be OK. This turned out to be a really good decision as his “super great rate” was changed to an even better rate when he