The alarm went off
at 6am and we were out on the street to get the 6.30am tuk-tuk we had
booked last night. When we got to the restaurant where we had bought
the bus tickets we got some breakfast, Kate having a go at them for
having such expensive pancakes. Our minivan arrived at 7am and we all
piled into the back seat, followed in by a group of Swiss girls and a
bunch of locals, who were joined by several more locals we stopped to
pick up as we passed through town. The van wasn't air-conditioned,
but with the windows open it was just bearable.
At about 10.30am,
the van dropped us all at a little restaurant outside the little town
of Strung Treng. Kate had specifically asked how long we would have
to wait in Strung Treng before she bought the tickets and had been
assured that it would only be an hour or so. It was on this basis
that she had chosen this bus rather than another that left Kratie
after midday, reasoning that this one would get us to our destination
significantly earlier. Of course, she had been told a big, fat lie
and we sat for several hours as other buses arrived from other parts
of Cambodia and disgorged their human cargo. As it approached lunch
time, the restaurant staff began to bring out big bowls of fried
rice, and we got a couple of plates and some Cokes.
Not long after, we
all got the signal to board the big bus that was waiting out the back
and we finally set off again for the border. When we got there, the
bus stopped outside another little restaurant within view of the
actual border, but crucially not actually at the border. An
unpleasant man got everyone off the bus and sat them down and started
barking a series of instructions and warnings relating to the getting
of the necessary stamps and visas for getting out of Cambodia and
into Laos, a process that would take 40 minutes and $45 (including a
so-called after-hours surcharge because it was after 4pm – which
the long wait at Strung Treng had conveniently ensured would be the
case). Of course, everyone handed over their passport and cash
because it seemed as though this was the only option – except us
and a few others. We smugly stayed out of this transaction as we had
cleverly (we thought), pre-organised our Laos visas while we were in
Hanoi.
When the passports
were returned, we all hopped back onto the bus for the short drive to
the actual border, where we grabbed our bags and trudged up to the
border post to get our Australian passports stamped by the Cambodian
officials (and pay the $2 'fee'). We then walked across to the Laos
border post and handed over our British passports, which contained
our Laos visas. And that's where the trouble started. We had chosen
to get the visas in our British passports because it was cheaper –
and the consular officials in Hanoi had assured us that leaving
Cambodia on one passport and entering Laos on another wouldn't be a
proble. But it was. The officials searched in vain through our
British passports for our Cambodian exit visas and were not mollified
when I produced the Australian passports and showed them the stamps.
They insisted that there had to be exit stamps in the same passport
as the visas and told me to go back to the Cambodian border post and
get the stamps. I duly did so, but of course the Cambodian officials
were having none of it and got quite angry at me for even suggesting
it. And thus we reached an impasse. Zoe started crying and the
annoying 'fixer' from earlier kept putting in his two cents worth –
eventually getting an earful from me and told to mind his own
business. We tried every argument we could think of and, to be
honest, it didn't feel as though they were scamming us – they
seemed to genuinely believe that they would get in trouble if they
let us through – but they were completely unyielding and in the
end, we just had to pay another $30 each to get new visas put into
our Australian passport (note that this means that the other
passengers on our bus, those who had their visas sorted out by the
'fixer', had paid $15 over the odds – a 50 per cent 'commission').
We were all then
crowded onto a minibus and driven to a ferry port on the Mekong
opposite an area known as Si Phan Don, or the Four Thousand Islands,
a riverine archipelago of islands of varying sizes, many of which are
submerged when the river is in flood. When we got there, the bus
driver became the ferry-ticket seller. We had all bought combined
tickets that included the boat trip over to the islands, but only
some of us successfully received our tickets. The guy found numerous
reasons why people's tickets weren't valid and quite a few people had
to shell out all over again. The good news for us was that our
tickets were okay; the bad news was that it was now after dark, so
the boats to Don Khon were no longer running, and although it was
possible to walk from Don Det to Don Khon, it was a four-kilometre
walk, in the dark; the good news was that we hadn't paid for our
rooms on Don Khon, so we just heaved a big sigh and got on with
things. This involved joining the queue to use one of the only two
ATMs in the area – there aren't any on the islands. Cash in hand,
we hopped back on the bus down to the pier, where we all eventually
crowded aboard two small long-tail boats - Kate on one, the girls and
I on the other. As Kate's boat headed into the current, the propeller
was too close to the surface and the girls both got comprehensively
sprayed.
When we reached the
pier at Don Det, we discovered that the recent rain had raised the
river sufficiently to make it rather difficult to actually get from
the pier to dry land, with everyone having to make a prodigious leap
from pier to stairs. Once we were all assembled, we dumped the bags
and Kate went off in search of somewhere to stay, a search that
involved visiting some guest houses that didn't appear have anyone
working in them and others that were populated by stoned slackers.
She eventually found somewhere basic but clean and cheap, the room
pretty big with a high ceiling, fans and an en suite, and it was to
here that we carried our bags, before going out for a pretty decent
meal at a nearby riverside restaurant called Mr Mo's.
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