Vietnam! I booked a flight and applied for a visa on arriving back in Phnom Penh. (max one day, only possible in Cambodia). A round trip ticket from Siem Reap to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), and back (open date) to Phnom Penh. Cost me around about 250 US dollars including the visa. I could have travelled from Phnom Penh to Saigon with the same VIP bus agency that took me to Siem Reap for a lovely five dollars; the trip would have taken about five hours. In fact, I most certainly would have done so had I known beforehand that I would have been simpler to travel by bus. One gets to see more, and in the end it doesn’t take all that much longer, at least when starting the journey in Phnom Penh.

The flight with Vietnam Airlines was OK, checking out in HCMC took a bit of getting used to…. They X-ray ones luggage after the flight for a second time – haven’t got a clue why they do that. Once in the arrival hall I went to the counter and ordered a taxi. The first one wanted 75 dollars for the journey to Vung Tau, the man at the second counter only 46 bucks. Nothing special happened during the three-hour journey, and although it was already dark and I didn’t have a clue where I was, I was not that worried about safety and the fact that I had cash and a camera etc with me. Vietnam is considered to be Asia’s safest country to travel in. One only has to watch out for pickpockets. 

I checked into the Rex Hotel, a middle-sized place with 75 rooms. The price of a room ranges from 20 – 70 dollars. I haggled the two-room suite down to 65 dollars, my one and only treat. Apart from that I only stayed for a few nights. The hotel has a good restaurant and an adjacent pool, which can be used for a small fee. There was a safe in the room (combination lock), a fast internet connection, there was also an open-air bar connected to the hotel. There, one was also able to take girls with, but only after they had knocked off from work. I did without this service because all of the girls were a little older, one is able to get this category all over, but I wanted to “see a bit of the town”.

Room, pool and hotel, view:  

It is a large town, motorbikes dominate the town’s appearance. It is not all that long ago, in times of “real existing socialism“ in west and middle Europe, that the deserving functionaries were sent here to recuperate. Huge roads that present a sterile image and large residential complexes that remind of Russia as seen on the telly, alternate with generous clean parks, small restaurants, cafés and quarters that are characterized by tiny old houses, run-down hotels and colourful markets in which people are going about their business.

Long have times passed when Europeans moved about as if the most normal thing in the world. Westerners have become a very seldom sight. Surprisingly, I was looked at and studied wherever I went, sometimes by a critical eye, but mainly in a friendly manner. Here a mixed impression of all this.