We took an early morning speed boat ride up the Mekong from Chau Doc, Vietnam to Phnom Penh. The first hour of the ride was in Vietnam. During that hour, a young man in jeans and a baseball hat gave us an visa form to sign, and then took our passports along with the form, a passport photo, and $23. Then he came back around the boat and offered to exchange dollars or Vietnamese dong to Cambodian riels. When we got to the border, we stopped and sat in what looked liked the waiting room of a bus station while mysterious people in the back did something. Then suddenly the young man said we could go. We never could figure out if he was a government official or who he worked for. We got back on the boat, went for five minutes, and got out again. This time we were in an outdoor courtyard. Four men sat off to the side at a table under an open sided structure doing something to our passports. One at a time, the young man would bring a completed passport to its owner who would then bring it to a window in a trailer-type structure where two men put three different stamps on the passport and visa form, and then kept the form. Finally, someone in a uniform checked before we got onto the boat that our passports were now in order.
The point of this long story ... next to the window in the trailer type structure was a Suggestion Box and a sign that said: Please give us your suggestions for how to improve this process. Duh! I could write a treatise on this one. I don't even understand what the process was. And what happens to people who didn't read the advance instructions and have a passport photo with them? Ya think there might be a more efficient way to get a visa for Cambodia?
We met our local guide and took a tour of Phnom Penh in the afternoon. We saw the National Museum which is in a beautiful building built by the French. The building was more interesting than the collection. Then the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda which were very impressive. Cambodia has a very different feel to it than Vietnam. Although it is a significantly poorer country, there are more cars here, particularly newer ones, and fewer motorbikes. Since fewer people own their own vehicles, the main mode of transportation is the tuk-tuk which is a rickshaw pulled by a motorbike. Also, although the riel is the official currency, everyone likes dollars here. We can pay anywhere in dollars and get change in dollars.
We ate at a local restaurant that had Cambodian, Thai, Chinese, and Western food along with, of course, pizza. Suzanne, who manages to eat five meals and several snacks a day, went with a cheeseburger for an appetizer (!) and curry for dinner. I had the banana flower salad. I'm really not sure what a banana flower is, but it was a good salad.
After a brief walk around the night market, it was time for ... another massage. The farther from Saigon we go, the cheaper the price is, so we get one every other day. Today we went to a place that has blind masseuses. Oh, the price is down to $10 for an hour. After the massage, we hailed a tuk-tuk to take us back to our hotel. The driver had no idea where our hotel was, so I pulled out the card and showed it to him. He stared at it for five minutes and could not decipher it. So I pulled out my map and showed him where to go. He still didn't seem to get it. We were not terribly inspired with confidence, but he finally nodded that he understood and took off. When we got to the street our hotel was on, he had to turn left, but it was a divided highway with a center barrier. No problem. He turned left into the oncoming traffic and proceeded up the left side between the parked cars and oncoming vehicles. Hell, a motorcycle doing the same thing passed us at one point. And we got to our hotel in one piece. Things just happen differently here.
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