Stalked at the border (7 March 2009)

Today was always going to be an adventure – I had a flight (on the rusty old prop….) out of Phu Quoc for Rach Gia, and I had a room booked in a guest house in Kampot – but I had no real idea as to how I was going to get from one to the other, an distance of around 150 kms. All I knew was that I had to exit Vietnam and enter Cambodia with stories of awkward and corrupt border guards ringing in my ears…. I was also a little unsure about my Cambodian visa – i.e. I didn’t have one. All the websites give conflicting information, e visas are/are not acceptable, visa on arrival is/isn’t available. But for once, I decided what the hell, one way or another I’d get there. Landing at Rach Gia at 9.30am, I discover I have two alternatives to make the 90 kms journey to the border. A taxi into Rach Gia bus station, wait for the local bus to Ha Tien, then find another bus from Ha Tien to the border at Xa Xia. All buses left approx every hour so I was facing a rather tortuous journey. I had hoped to tie up with any one else going my way, but the flight was going on to HCMC and I was the only Westerner who got off at Rach Gia, together with one local family. So I tried negotiating with the taxi drivers outside the airport – but language was a real issue – long story short, I got an airport official to act as a translator. He looked really dubious at my request for a taxi to cover the distance, it would be “very expensive” he said, full of concern. It came in at £24 so I did what no respecting backpacker would have done and said “deal”! So in the lap of luxury - well not quite, a dilapidated old car with plastic seats (not too good in this climate – the pilot had informed us it was 30 degrees when we landed at 9.30am with high humidity) and inefficient aircon, we drove off for the border. It was a nice drive if a little sticky, following yet another tributary of the Mekong, with canals running off at right angles every so often. The narrow road was made even narrower in loads of places as the local residents had laid out what looked like rice to dry along the road – guess there wasn’t much option with the river on the other side.
We finally enter the frontier area and my taxi drops me and my bag off at the border. Even before I step out of the car a guy on a motorbike asks where I am going. Frankly, I thought it was pretty obvious – Cambodia, there weren’t too many other choices! But he meant after I had got through the formalities. I tell him Kampot and he insists I have to take his transport, i.e. me, my big case and my backpack on a motorbike for two hours from the Cambodian border via Kep to Kampot…. There is no other transport he informs me. Well let me tell you, I have read Lonely Planet with the best of them and that says there are all sorts of people waiting at the other side to do your bidding. But he won’t take no for an answer. I have to take numerous telephone calls on his mobile from his “translator” insisting the same. No, no I say, but when I realised it was a walk of just over one kilometre from exiting Vietnam to entering Cambodia, I almost change my mind. But being a health & safety sort of a girl, I decide to walk the kilometre dragging my bag along the dusty track in the midday sun – what is that they say about mad dogs? But my stalker continued to dog my every weary step. Contrary to all the horror stories of corrupt Cambodian border guards, they were charm itself. Only issue was a bit of waiting around and they had no change for my $50 bill ($25 visa fee). And I also had to pay 20,000 Vietnamese Dong (about £1) for the bit of paper that said I had no dreadful disease. But it was worth the £1. Said motorbike driver was right – the guide books were wrong – there was no transport of any kind after the Cambodian border apart from my stalking motorbike driver. Am not surprised really, there were no other Westerners in sight. But my trusty health lady helped me out and contacted someone she knew who arrived a few minutes later with a taxi – and I start my two hour drive to Kampot in yet another dilapidated old car with plastic seats, no aircon, and the temperature wasn’t going down …. The roads however, were. After what I thought were rough roads in Vietnam, they were like a newly resurfaced stretch of the M1 compared to the red dust tracks of Cambodia. Just a few kilometres and a different world. Different language (not that I can tell the difference) but the script is very different – no letters that we would recognise, just curly bits. And what I took for poverty in Vietnam, looked like wealth now. The fishing and agriculture that lined the road all the way from Rach Gia to the border was gone – now there was the odd shack but a marked increase in the number of religious temples – perhaps that tells us something…..
There are no pics with this blog – having heard all those stories about strange border guards I decided I didn’t want to get arrested for taking pics of sensitive places……