Baptism By Fire

Our tuk-tuk ride through the beautiful Cambodian countryside.

What a day! It's been a great day!! This morning we set off on our last trip in Cambodia. We were up with the sun, and after breakfast headed out on tuk tuk for the Cambodia/Vietnam border. It was a great trip. First we started off on a main paved road through a few towns, but it wasn't long before we were off-roading in our tuk-tuk through farming communities. The people were friendly and always calling out "hello" or "bye-bye" as we passed. We felt famous. The scenery was beautiful as well.

Eventually, we reached the border, a stop along the dusty red road. Crossing the Cambodian side was easy after negotiating a couple motorbike taxis for the remainder of our trip to the Vietnamese town, Ha Tien. And, after waiting a while and paying a few "bribes" we entered Vietnam.

Nothing surprises us anymore....well, it does but it shouldn't. This motorized merry-go round seems very out of place here in Ha Tien.

We realized quickly that this isn't a town that gets many Western tourists...or any tourists for that matter. As far as we can tell, people give us honest prices when we ask, and there is no English anywhere! The only English words we've seen are "hotel", "restaurant", and a slogan for what I think might be toilet paper stating, "Blessing you". Needless to say, not many people here speak English either. This made getting lunch very interesting. We have no idea what Vietnamese food is like. All we knew when we got here was that there are over 500 Vietnamese dishes, and "pho", is the name for soup. We walked the streets with stomachs growling looking for a place to eat. Unlike Thailand, we didn't see any street stalls, where you can easily see what is being made. All we saw were Vietnamese words. So, rather than go hungry, we decided to be brave. We sat down at a restaurant and pointed to the words "pho bo", having no idea what we were ordering, other than probably soup. To our great delight, it turned out to be a very good and filling bowl of beef noodle soup. We've since figured out the basics, like what to call rice, chicken and fish...and hopefully that will make ordering supper a little less surprising.

We spent some time wandering through the market this afternoon and through some sign language managed to buy some bananas....less than a dollar for about 20 of them.

The oldest motorbike we've seen to date.....I'm not even sure how it's still running.

The lack of English also proved a bit difficult in trying to figure out how to take a bus to Can Tho, where we want to head tomorrow. We think we've managed to find out that buses leave from the bus station at 5 am...so I guess we'll show up bright and early and see what happens.

Shrimp, drying on the side of the road. We've seen heaping bowls full of dry shrimp and other kinds of seafood in many of the shops around town.

So far it's been really great to be here. The people in the town are friendly and are very helpful...as helpful as they can be when we can't speak Vietnamese, and they can't speak English. The weather here continues to be hot and sunny in the south.

And yes, the braids are gone....I took them out just before Christmas because they were falling out. It's kinda nice to have my hair back again, although nothing can compete with the convenience of braids.

Well, as long as our bus information proves true, we will hopefully find ourselves a little deeper into Vietnam tomorrow!

Right across from our hotel is a wedding celebration. They just set the tent up on the side of the road, and as I write, everyone is enjoying a big feast....and listening to some very loud...and to our ears, very bad, live music. We're hoping that since the festivities started early they will end early to, so we can get some sleep tonight.