I was right, today has been a bit like the original Mekong boat in terms of reservations! Decide against the local bus to get to Rach Gia – stopping and starting and over four hours with nowhere to put my suitcase seemed too much of a challenge. So I take a car (just over two hours). It was a good job I did – I had had no reply from the internet site I tried to book the hotel in Rach Gia with so had no address. No one in Rach Gia appeared to have heard of it, so I dropped into an internet café to see if I could contact them. The girl there very kindly looked up the address so I gave it to the driver. It wasn’t looking hopeful – the address we had been given by her was in the middle of an industrial landscape some way out of the town – rooms looked a bit iffy (I had originally tried to book a room in a small four room villa also called a “full service hotel….” - this definitely wasn’t it. No one there spoke any English and as I had to organise a very early taxi for tomorrow decided against it. Something about the family living in reception with their TV and cooking pots going put me off…. And my taxi driver didn’t speak any English either…. Was all a bit of stalemate until the girl at the guest house had the idea of calling one of her friends who spoke English, good lateral thinking I thought. Long story short, but like a Victorian Grand Traveller (or a brash American….) I announced my driver should “take me to the best hotel in town, where English is spoken”. I was hopeful of a Raffles type place. Actually I am in the Hong Nam hotel in the centre of Rach Gia – it bears no relation to Raffles or even a Travelodge, but I guess at £8 a night, seems clean and includes dodgy wifi - what can you expect! It even has aircon, but that doesn't appear to be stopping the mozzies from getting through the gaps in the windows and doors.....
Looking around Rach Gia I’m not surprised this is the best available. Frankly the town is a bit of a dump with nothing to recommend it. Not sure what it's major economy is, probably rice export as it's where one of the wide Mekong tributaries flows into the sea, the Gulf of Thailand. Part of it is built on recliamed land. Its main tourist purpose is that it’s the stepping stone to Phu Quoc, the island. You can either fly (my plan unless that reservation has gone wrong too….) or take the four hour “Superdong” (what a great name!) ferry. So I settle into my spartan room, and decide to double check my Phu Quoc reservation which was for the next two weeks. Yes, it was going to be one of those days. Even though months ago, I had confirmed a hotel called the Cassia Cottage, they had apparently sent me an email asking for a deposit. I definitely never received that, so no deposit was paid, so they just let my reservation lapse without contacting me again. Lucky there’s wifi in the Hong Nam, but every major website I go on to comes back with no availability in Phu Quoc for the days I want. Some of the smaller hotels require you to fill in a form and wait for a reply, but I didn’t have time for that. And then I remembered Skype, and how you can use as a normal telephone. I think I now have a room for the first week in the Seastar Hotel. I emailed to confirm, and I haven’t heard back yet… I could be setting up a tent on the beach!
But regardless of the reservation traumas, the drive here was really interesting. We soon left Chau Doc behind and entered the rice fields. The road with buses and bikes (no cars) was about as wide as Button Street and lined either side, virtually all the way with tumbledown houses hanging on to the slope down to the small browny grey rivers, of which there are hundreds – more than there are roads - perhaps people have private boats instead of cars... Behind them were the rice fields, that amazing emerald green again, and stretching for miles. No sign of a Tiger economy here – the shacks were in a dreadful state, a lot made with corrugated iron which must be like ovens and shaking on their bamboo legs as we passed. I suppose it’s for that reason that everyone seems to live life out in the open - not for me, but there again if there’s no room at the inn tomorrow night, it might have to be!
Looking around Rach Gia I’m not surprised this is the best available. Frankly the town is a bit of a dump with nothing to recommend it. Not sure what it's major economy is, probably rice export as it's where one of the wide Mekong tributaries flows into the sea, the Gulf of Thailand. Part of it is built on recliamed land. Its main tourist purpose is that it’s the stepping stone to Phu Quoc, the island. You can either fly (my plan unless that reservation has gone wrong too….) or take the four hour “Superdong” (what a great name!) ferry. So I settle into my spartan room, and decide to double check my Phu Quoc reservation which was for the next two weeks. Yes, it was going to be one of those days. Even though months ago, I had confirmed a hotel called the Cassia Cottage, they had apparently sent me an email asking for a deposit. I definitely never received that, so no deposit was paid, so they just let my reservation lapse without contacting me again. Lucky there’s wifi in the Hong Nam, but every major website I go on to comes back with no availability in Phu Quoc for the days I want. Some of the smaller hotels require you to fill in a form and wait for a reply, but I didn’t have time for that. And then I remembered Skype, and how you can use as a normal telephone. I think I now have a room for the first week in the Seastar Hotel. I emailed to confirm, and I haven’t heard back yet… I could be setting up a tent on the beach!
But regardless of the reservation traumas, the drive here was really interesting. We soon left Chau Doc behind and entered the rice fields. The road with buses and bikes (no cars) was about as wide as Button Street and lined either side, virtually all the way with tumbledown houses hanging on to the slope down to the small browny grey rivers, of which there are hundreds – more than there are roads - perhaps people have private boats instead of cars... Behind them were the rice fields, that amazing emerald green again, and stretching for miles. No sign of a Tiger economy here – the shacks were in a dreadful state, a lot made with corrugated iron which must be like ovens and shaking on their bamboo legs as we passed. I suppose it’s for that reason that everyone seems to live life out in the open - not for me, but there again if there’s no room at the inn tomorrow night, it might have to be!
