Bangkok, Thailand

Hooray! Seven-and-a-half weeks after flying into Bangkok we've completed a big circle, visited four countries, and made it back in one piece! Time spent on buses currently stands at about 106 hours, while time spent on boats totals about 30 hours. I got to Bangkok last night, travelling with two German girls, and Catherine is arriving today, in the compay of a bearded Swede I believe (not sure if male or female) ;-) ...
The beginning of the rainy season made visiting Vietnam's beach towns Nha Trang and Mui Ne less interesting than it could have been, so we didn't hang around long (though I stayed a day longer than C in Mui Ne because I couldn't resist checking out the Fairy Stream). Once in Saigon I bumped into Igor, the cousin of my Basque friend, within an hour of getting of the bus. It's a small world! I spent two days there taking in the sights and planning my next border crossing and caught up with Igor in the evenings over a couple of drinks.
I decided to go with the 2-day Mekong Delta tour into Cambodia, travelling by boat and bus and taking in some sights along the way. On the first day we sailed past a floating market and saw some sweet-making shops and drank Jasmine tea whilst sampling Vietnamese delights such as coconut or peanut toffee and popped rice. This was just before it started pouring rain and we ended up being whipped by wind and rain whilst sitting in our teeny boat (quite scary really, though you just have to laugh - the logical thing would have been to turn back but try telling that to an Asian). After that it eased off a bit and we had lunch and listened to some traditional music. We stayed overnight in a place called Chau Doc and on the second day we saw a floating market, a fish farm, and a Cham village (according to the guide, the governement reduced the price of TVs so that poorer Vietnamese have less children - even the most basic huts had a satellite dish). We crossed the border by boat with a really good guide, a Chinese-Vietnamese woman who was very funny, very nice and efficient and, most unusually, kept us informed along the way of what was happening next. She helped us with our visa applications and faffed about with the border police while we had lunch. Easiest border crossing ever, and because we did it by boat we were at a quiet border crossing point - we were the only ones there!
Once in Phnom Penh I teamed up with two German girls (Angelika and Christina) I met along the way, and we shared a room, making the expensive riverfront slightly less expensive! My first impression of Cambodia was that its culture and religion were closer to Laos or Thailand than to Vietnam, and the people seemed less stern as well. However poverty was rife, and there were a lot of beggars and cripples. When we didn't buy books from the streetkids they could be really aggressive - one had even bothered to learn to say "I'll kill you" in English to scare tourists. We realised that everyone over 35 must have been directly affected by the Khmer Rouge regime, and anyone younger is also suffering the after effects. There aren't many old people and the ones you do see are often crippled or bald from years of malnutrition. And this is just what we saw in the nicest area in town! We also saw the king drive by in a line of armoured vehicles a couple of times.
After two days we got the bus to Siem Reap - it took 6 hours but the road was not too bad and the bus, though old, was comfortable enough (we didn't go for the VIP bus option). Siem Reap is very touristy and the only thing to see are the temples, but it has lots of good restaurants and bars and a couple of supermarkets so all the tourist needs are catered for. Like Phnom Penh we found it very expensive. We did the tour of the temples on the second day. I've never taken so many pics in one place! It was rather stunning, though the afternoon rain cut the tour short so that was disappointing.
Yesterday we crossed the border to Thailand... A journey we'd been warned would be hard going, and it was! We took the direct bus to save money (another option was taking a taxi to the border and then getting on a bus, but no one could say how much the bus would cost or when/where we could get it). The road was so bumpy that we drove at about 30km/h all the way... and the bus looked like a battered 30-yr old school bus. No air con and the dust got everywhere! But kind of fun... :-) Then the bus on the Thai side of the border was a pleasant surprise of course. We were on the road from 8am till after 9pm.. today is definitely a chill-out day! It's nice to be back somewhere familiar.
On Monday I'm heading south to Pattaya to stay with a family friend, but other than that my plans are unfixed. I think I will pretty much be sticking to the original plan, and Catherine is flying to Oz in about a week. She can give me tips for when I get there!
That's all for now x x x x