Our pickup was slightly late and it took an hour to get round all the hotels, partly as 2 people were having a late brekkie or had slept in or something. Quite a small group in all – us, a Dutch couple, a Korean girl, two Chinese/American women and a family of 3 from France.

The small but comfy bus drove us to Neak Luong where we transferred to a boat for around 2 hours as we made our way to the Cambodian/Vietnamese border. Here (at Kaam Samnor) we hopped out, got our exit stamps and jumped back onboard again. Across the border, we disembarked with luggage and had our entry visas checked and stamps applied. While there, we grabbed some lunch – just a bunch of spring rolls and a drink for us – while coo-ing over a very cute Vietnamese baby.

The boat journey from here (Vinh Xuong) to Chau Doc was another 2 hours. Along the way some great sites: a footbridge consisting of a thick bamboo pole as the walking surface – very narrow; fishing nets which rose out of the water using a system of bamboo strips; kids frolicking in the water and waving as we passed; water buffalo ducking under as we got too close; a huge variety of houses, shacks and boats…

The weather wasn’t too bad with only one short flurry of rain before we reached Chau Doc. It’s a small town with a frequent flow of tourists due to the nearby crossing, but not an awful lot here. We visited the temple and did an email check in a very slow internet place (3000d an hour). I had my photo taken with some random Vietnamese and a huge number of kids wanted to shout “hello” at us. We had some sugar cane drink which was absolutely delicious (and probably tourist price at 5000d) and also some lotus flower seeds for a similar, likely inflated, price.

Leah’s stomach wasn’t behaving today, but she still wolfed down some shrimp with noodles while I had a rather nice chicken boiled in lemon grass and chilli. We spent an hour or so over dinner chatting to the couple from the Netherlands before retiring fairly early due to a 6:30 breakfast call the following morning.