Day 111 – CAMBODIA BOUND, HCMC to Phnom Penh.

Our bus wasn’t until 1pm so we had the morning to do what we want. We didn’t really do a lot apart from eat breakfast in a cute little café around the corner. We got picked up at 12.30 and was taken about 100m down the road to be put on another bus, we could have easily walked but who can turn down a free pick up, especially when you don’t know where the bus goes from!

We went with Mekong Express who is supposed to be the best company. It cost us $13 each, we had wifi and a small snack. It was no Thai Airways but the journey was alright. They took our passports and we paid them $25 to sort out our visa, the border was smooth sailing and after hopping on and off the bus about 3 times in 5 minutes we were ready and had arrived in Cambodia.

The bus then stopped for a half an hour break, by this point or pretty much when any bus we’ve been on has stopped we’d rather it just carried on. Back on the bus we arrived in Cambodia about an hour and a half later than expected. Well… I say expected I mean the time we were told. As usual they drop you really far outside the town/city you want to go to so the tuk tuk drivers make money. We got in one and he wanted to charge us $15, I got him down to $10 and knew we were being over charged but we had no idea where we were, how much anything was worth and just wanted to get to our room and grab some dinner. It probably was about the 9km he said because it took us a good 20minutes to arrive at The Mad Monkey hostel.

Emily and Cara (the girls we had dinner with yesterday) arrived earlier than us so we got some dinner in the hostel restaurant and then went to the rooftop bar to meet them. It’s weird being here and mostly using American dollars for currency, but as they don’t use coins anything less than $1 you get in Cambodian money… so weird!

Day 110 – Ho Chi Minh City, Cu Chi tunnels.

I got 21 seconds to go, I’ve got 21 seconds to go… ok 21 days until home but still. The main thing to see and do in and around the city is the Cu Chi tunnels, these are tunnels that the Vietnamese created and lived in to hide and protect themselves when the war was on. The tunnels were about an hour or so away from the city, so we decided to go for the half day tour, which picked us up at 8am.

The tunnels were really interesting and learnt a lot. A few of the facts I learnt was that the sandals they wore were bigger at the front than at the back to fool the American troops into thinking they were going the other way. So the footprints that got left in the ground were the opposite way to where they were going, quite clever if you ask me! Another is they used to cook all the food for the day early in the morning and the smoke used to come out of a tube at least 1km away from the kitchen to mislead the troops too. The reason they did it early in the morning was so it could be covered up and to make it look like fog. We also had the chance to try some Tapioca, it just tasted a bit like potato, it was very bland.

We got to walk around or more crouch our way through some of the tunnels, which they have made slightly bigger for tourists. Vietnamese people are so small compared to the average westerner.

We were shown many of the traps they used against the American troops, there were at least 10 different ways of catching them and a lot of the time it was just to injure them but not kill them so they could go back and find them, so kind of like winning a prize.

We got back to Ho Chi Minh City around 3pm and had a little chill for the afternoon as it was very hot out at the tunnels. We then met two girls who we’ve known since Halong Bay for dinner, which was lovely and discovered they’re going to Cambodia tomorrow too so I’m sure we will bump into them again.

Day 109 – Mui Ne to Ho Chi Minh City.

The bus came and picked us up just gone 8am and should have arrived at midday… 2 hours after ETA we were in our final destination in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City or as it used to be called Saigon.

We checked into our hostel where we were staying in pods or more massive incubators, Chrissy just said it felt like a morgue, it was a weird but cool experience. We were going to go and check out the museum but it shut quite early so we decided to head to the Botanical gardens and Zoo, it cost us 8,000 dong to get in, so about 30p! Bargain, there were lots of cages with not a lot of animals but we did get to see some giraffe, elephants, goats, you know the usual zoo/farm animals. It was a good way to spend the afternoon and by that point it was a cooler point of the day so it wasn’t that bad walking around.

For dinner we decided to go for the old favourite of Frozen Yoghurt which was only a 5 minute or less walk from where we were staying. After that we popped over to the night market to grab a few things where I found out my haggling streak still exists! Win!

Day 108 – Mui Ne.

After the crazy day we had yesterday most of us couldn’t be bothered to do a lot. We chilled by the pool and Chrissy discovered there are loungers at the back of the resort that are right on the waterfront bringing through an amazing breeze, which is exactly what we were looking for in this heat. Chilled there for a few hours, then went to the popular family restaurant for lunch, jumped in the pool, made a new friend and discovered that this little town has ‘the best burgers’ in the Vietnam… or so they say. We left the popular family restaurant behind and made the 20minute walk down the road to sample some western cuisine. They were pretty good, I wouldn’t say the best I’ve eaten and nowhere near as good as Fergburger but it was delicious none the less. The chocolate milkshake I had though was massive and one of the best. We couldn’t resist on our walk back to drop in on the guys in the popular family restaurant for a quick drink and to say goodbye as we’re leaving in the morning.

Day 107 – Mui Ne bike adventures and Tyler’s birthday.

I didn’t sleep very well so didn’t join them for the early morning activities but joint them for second breakfast at 9am. The curtains don’t really do anything in this hostel so when the sun rises about 5.30, that’s what time you wake up. We discovered at breakfast that our new friends had had pretty much every meal in the popular family restaurant since they’ve been here and why wouldn’t you when it’s right on the beach front and is the cheapest place to eat in the whole town. It’s even the cheaper to buy a bottle of water here than it is in the shop next door to us.

After breakfast we hopped on the bikes and went to visit fairy springs This place is made of sand and the colours are just amazing. We trekked through it for about half an hour before finding a waterfall and then walking back to the bikes. 

Our main excursion for the day was to find the Big Buddha at Ta Cu Mountain. We thought it was closer than it was, after just over an hours worth of driving and asking many different people for directions we had arrived! It was a bit more expensive than we thought it was going to be but seeing as we had now come all this way we obviously had to go in. It was 120,000 dong for the cable car and then another 20,000 just to enter the place, so it was only £4. We got in our cable car, which was quite cool as it took us up and over the mountain. 

The views were amazing but we didn’t realise as we got out of the cable car we still had to walk another 100m or so up to the Big Buddha. It was quite a good work out and they’re not lying when they say it’s big! It’s called Thich-Ca-Nhap-Niet-Ban and is 49 metres long and is the largest reclining Buddha in Vietnam.

When we left here we made the long journey back to Mui Ne through rush hour traffic and obviously went for dinner in the popular family restaurant as it was Tyler’s birthday after all!