Border crossing to Vietnam

Our last day in Cambodia began (guess what) with another early start.  After a very special time in Phnom Penh, witnessing the old King's cremation and learning all about Cambodia's sad past, we were transfering two hours out of town to meet our bikes.







We had about 18km to our first snack break at an "in the middle of nowhere" petrol station. We rode our bikes through lovely villages where all the kids came running, screaming "hello, hello" and wanted to high five us whilst going passed.  They were so excited.

the border to Vietnam 

There was a fair amount of traffic on this never ending very straight road. We shared the way to the border with lots of motorbikes, horse and carriages, lorries and the occasional group of cows.  I tell you it is quite satisfying if you keep overtaking motorised vehicles with your pushbike!


After  a break we had another 12 km to lunch, again on a very, very straight road.  The headwind and the high standing sun made it quite a fight to get there.  Alex had only eaten rice as his insides were not so happy that day (delhi belly on the way ?!)


From here we only had about 10 km to the border; it was crazy hot.  I managed to hang on to a very fast group of cyclists (Beki, Tim, and David) which made that journey terribly hard but very fast and I just wanted to get out of the heat!


Saying goodbye to our bikes and the Cambodian cycling team we all escaped on the air-conditioned bus for a pointless (hilariously so) 1 minute bus ride.

saying goodbye to Fila

Nee warned us the day before that the border would be incredibly hot with no shade and would take a while to get through; as there are 3 different tin-shed-like buildings where we have to collect stamps for our passports.  It didn't take as long as we thought to get through.  We said goodbye to Fila and welcomed Mr.  Lam with our new Vietnam crew on the other side.









While a lot of our cycling friends had to put pedals, bags, saddles and other toys on their new bikes, I thought "I'm going to collapse"; it must have been 40 degrees, no shade and no wind - absolutely ridiculous...

One of my artistic moments while waiting for our passports.

I got very grumpy and nearly got on that bus again to avoid the heat and save all the others from my foul mood.  Thank God I didn't, because as soon as we were sitting on those bikes and got a little wind in the hair I calmed down and appreciated the beauty around us.  Vietnam is sooooo different to Cambodia. It seemed like suddenly the rice fields were green and people were busy and happy doing things. We stopped after 15km at a catfish farm to recharge before we headed another 10 km to Chau Doc for the night.  We went to an authentic Vietnamese restaurant where Alex had some more rice and I some very interesting spring rolls.  I didn't have a good tummy that night either...