Indo-China 3

After the trip we enjoyed to Sihanoukville (on the Cambodian coast) I can really see the benefit of having a car and driver or a teleportation system.   Picked up at 6.30 from our hotel, we changed vehicles twice before we even got to the main bus station, took 7 hours to Phnom Penh, had to wait until 3.10 for the connection and arrived in Sihanoukville at 8.50.  Apart from some fruit, we’d not eaten since breakfast.   The bus was only $10 each and a lot less for the locals.  Still, it can’t get worse than that can it?   Well yes it can, as you’ll see in my next email (nb no accidents).  Booked for 3 days in a hotel on the beach, we checked out in the morning and walked 50 yards to another which had thatched beach bungalows, our own terrace, view of the sea, clean fresh room – exactly what we wanted.   Called Above Us Only Sky, I can imagine where they got the name from.

Two colourful Russians in the next one, about 30, good looking (apparently !) with Sergei the talker  and Spartak Moscow supporter having a great command of English.  Matching the stereotype, they drank like fish, getting through beer, a bottle of wine and most of a bottle of Jim Beam during the day.  They were as high as kites, helped along with some wacky baccy.  When we got back in the evening after a meal, they were on Bloody Mary’s at the bar.  I heard Sergei saying to an English woman “but, if I say ‘if I was a woman’, is this not the subjunctive?” with the Russian film villain accent.  He was very entertaining and very good looking (apparently).  Did I say that?   He predicts a revolution in Russia in the autumn, doesn’t like Putin but says “he is the only man for Russia, there is no other”.

Sihanoukville is very touristy, lots of beach vendors and lots of children selling stuff along the beach.  Selling here is much less aggressive than in say, India.  Here, very soft, soft sell.  Just like water wearing away a rock.  Very soft but constant and so much nicer.  Tuk-tuk drivers ask, you say no thanks and they’re quite likely to say “perhaps next year”.

There are many amputees around in a country which still has masses of unexploded mines and anti-personnel devices.  I was fortunate but Heather saw one man with either no legs or unusable ones and only one arm.  He was dragging himself along the road on his stomach with the one arm he had.  You just can’t guess what it could be like.  I complain about a bus ride!

We usually visit a single country on these sort of trips and after about a week you pick up the style and pace of the place, the prices, how to cross the road, just the feel of it even without the language.  So now we’re off to Vietnam.

We have a land crossing and we walk across no-man’s land between the border posts to discover that this place is very different from Cambodia.  We leave our mini bus (with Westerners!) and don’t see any more western faces, we hear no English because nobody speaks it in a meaningful way.  I’m fully aware that I don’t speak Khmer, or Vietnamese or Laotian but be fair I am English and that should be good enough.    We are stared at in a very friendly way as objects of curiosity, smiled and waved to and the kids, who are obviously being taught English all call out “Hello” or “How are you”.  Except one who greeted us with “Howdy Ma’am”.  To one group of kids at a café calling out hello, I raised my hat and said Good Afternoon which had them in hysterics and was very satisfying.  Then in the market, “do you need any directions?”  Turned out to be a young Vietnamese girl who lives in Colorado and was visiting home for Chinese New Year.  Her mother sold fruit in the market.

We have to get money so off to the bank where the cash machine is on the blink.  Inside we are shunted to a counter and to get a $100 worth of Dong I have to use my card and pin in a machine, produce my passport, sign 3 pieces of paper, then 3 more and print my full name 3 times.  Alongside me a woman is stuffing a shopping bag with banknotes in wads the size of housebricks.   For my $100 (about £60) I get two million Dong.  So, you get a bottle of coca-cola and a tea and the bill is what seems like an eye-watering 45,000 Dong.  It will take some getting used to.

This is the year of the Water Dragon, which is only every 60 years and New Year is the biggest festival and holiday of the year.  We’re told, nothing will be open, no buses will run, hotels will be full, restaurants will be shut and all the prices go up.  It seems to last in various forms for about 10 days.  Just how we like it, nice and easy.  We did know all of this before we crossed the border and are only staying here in Ha Tien overnight before catching a bus into the middle of the Mekong Delta to a place called Ben Tre.   Impression from the guide book – Sleepy Hollow.   To give an idea of climate, we are on the river at Ha Tien so cooled a fair bit but as I sit in the travel agents doing nothing more energetic than breathe as I melt, locals walk by with fleeces on.  I saw a woman wearing woolly gloves.

The lack of English is disconcerting because we have no fall back, we can’t read a sign that says Bookshop to buy a phrasebook, and anyway it’s New Year, they’re closed.   A small supermarket has some things we get but we’re both puzzled by a can of Green Grass Jelly Drink.

This is a non-touristy place and we’re out tomorrow but it has an attractive set of gardens along the river which are covered in thousands of flowers being sold for New Year.  Lots of yellow Chrysanthemums for luck,  yellow being the colour of gold and therefore ‘lucky’.  We have a direct bus to Ben Tre, 5 hours, no stops and a pick up from our hotel at 6.30 in the morning.   It turns out we should have bought an awful lot of those Chrysanths.