Border Crossing: Vietnam to Cambodia

During our short reunion with Hari in Hoi An, we planned on meeting up in Saigon after spending some time in northern Vietnam. From Saigon the 3 of us would cross the border into Cambodia via the Mekong River. We spent some time up in Hanoi and Sa Pa and then Sarah and I flew back to Saigon to meet Hari and travel together for a few weeks.

As we were in a taxi on the way to the guesthouse that Hari had booked for the 3 of us I saw two of Hari's Aussie friends, Brad and Esther, sitting at a bar. I had briefly met them up in Hoi An and they were really cool. They had to go to Thailand for a wedding and decided to take advantage and travel through SE Asia for a few months. Hari had met them a few weeks earlier and they hit it off and decided to travel together for awhile... What a coincidence that they were in Saigon, I thought that they were supposed to be in Thailand by this point. After dropping off our stuff at the hotel I ran down to the bar to say hi and they said that they were still with Hari and he was on his way. Because of the situation in Thailand they could not fly into Bangkok as they had originally planned, so they decided to join us and come to Cambodia. We were really excited to have a fun group of 5 to cross the border with and celebrated with a few Tiger Beers and caught each other up on our journeys since we had last seen each other.We all boarded a small boat and got started traveling down the Mekong, stopping along the way at a few little shops on the water where they were making rice paper and coconut candy. It was a beautiful day to be riding along the River and the 5 of us just relaxed and chatted. After a few hours we stopped off at a floating hotel where we would spend our last night in Vietnam. We went to a small street restaurant where no one spoke a word of English so via the Vietnamese that we had all picked up over the past few weeks and some hand signals we ordered our last pho noodle dinner. Delicious. Back at the hotel Brad had his guitar so we made some drinks and had a jam session on top of the hotel, it was an excellent evening with good friends and we were all looking forward to entering a new country.

The next morning we got on another boat and headed towards the border. We were surrounded by clear blue skies, palm trees, and fishermen on the Mekong. When we crossed the border we had to go to a checkpoint to have our passports and visas checked and before we knew it we were in Cambodia. We all decided that our first stop would be Phnom Penh, so off we went...