Leaving Crooked Cambodia for Vietnam!

Anyway, as you may recall we went to the beach to wait until our Vietnam visa's were effective so we could enter the country... Well, Feb 25 rolls around and we're off and running to the boarder. We take a bus an hour south where we pick up a slow boat down the Mekong river. Nice! Then we jump off at Cambodia's boarder shacks and get our exit stamps without needing to pay a bribe so that was good. Then we jump back in the boat to head to Vietnam's entry stamp shacks. The nice young gents there summarily tell us to pound salt and kiss off! Apparently they didn't like the fact that Ewa's visa is in the old but still effective passport while her new passport is the "active" passport in the Polish Embassy's terms. We cannot get in but even getting back is a challenge. We race back on the back of two hired motorcycles to the Cambodian boarder so that we can have our exit stamps canceled and beg them to re-enter the country (again no bribe paid to the nice young gun toting boarder guy in his t-shirt i.e. not bothering to wear his uniform any more in the heat). From there we have to race by "speedboat" (picture a row boat with a small outboard engine) back to the place where we caught the slow boat so we can hopefully get a ride back on teh mini-bus to Phnom Pehn. This was hairy but one of the most fun adventures we've had yet. The fear of being stuck in the shanty town between the boarders overnight was enough to get the heart pounding a bit. A pic from our trip up the Mekong back to Phnom Pehn.

Next day we got everything squared away with the Vietnamese consulate ($10 bribe) and caught a bus to HCMC. All is well and we are currently sitting in a cafe in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam.