Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh

On day four, we took a $13 bus ride to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam (formally called Saigon). WAY cheaper than flying. It was about a six and a half hour ride but really scenic and quite the experience going over the border.

We did a lot of research ahead of time to make sure we knew the proper procedure for obtaining visas. It was easy in Phnom Penh - fly into the airport and get your Cambodian visa for $20 on site. When you enter into a country through a means other than an airport however, it gets a little trickier.

Basically, on our Phnom Penh city tour the first day, our guide made a pit stop for us to a travel agency so we could hand over our passports and get an expedited Vietnam visa, meaning we could pick it up the next day. It was definitely unnerving to hand over our passports, but this is simply the way it is done, and that was confirmed in all of our research. It was a little more expensive with the expedition, but was still only about $40 each.

The Vietnam visa is obviously a necessity when crossing the border, so I was really glad we trusted the system.

The bus was fairly comfortable and they provided bottled water.

The ENTIRE trip, meaning all 6ish hours, they played this HORRIBLE Cambodian musical show on the TV up front. It was a neat cultural experience for the first five minutes, but it was SO loud and annoying! My iPod couldn't even begin to drown it out, LOL.

The next pictures are just shots out my window at the scenery we passed.

We had to take a ferry across the river, so these mango vendors were permitted on the bus to sell their fruit while we waited in line.

There were two ferries loading buses and cars

The view out my window on the ferry.

A few miles before the Vietnam border, the bus stopped at a roadside restaurant where we ordered a couple entrees and iced coffee.

They use sweetened condensed milk in their coffee. DELICIOUS!

That's a picture of the durian fruit... more on our experience with that nastiness to come ;-)

Ho Chi Minh had a much more updated and European feel than Phnom Penh. It was decorated for the Chinese New Year celebration, so there were flowers and gold decorations EVERYWHERE.

In Phnom Penh, dollars were accepted everywhere. Not so in Ho Chi Minh. Our cab driver from the bus station stopped at a jeweler for Joel to exchange enough money to pay him for taking us to our hotel. Not the best exchange rate. We did most of our exchanging at ATMs.

Our cab driver.

Looks European, right?

We were on the bus from about 0830 until 1600. It wasn't a bad trip at all, although at least an hour of it was spent at the border. It was kinda ridiculous how many hoops you have to jump through and how inefficient their process is to get people across. But, we made it and we met some Americans who were teaching English in Ho Chi Minh that were coming back from a backpacking trip in Cambodia so it was neat to talk to them. You really do meet lots of cool people from all over the world on trips like this. :)