Cambodia-Vietnam Border Crossing Fun

So we got the bus from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City direct, although we ended up booking the cheapest bus as all of the others were full, we thought this may have been a bit of a scam at first, but once we hit the traffic miles and miles from the border and found out that it was the first day of the last week of a month-long festival in both Cambodia and Vietnam we realised we had really chosen the wrong day to go! The journey was horrible! Our bus had a nice mix of tourists – English, Australian, Finnish, Thai, Japanese and Vietnamese and also some Cambodians. The traffic jam at first was quite jolly, there was the usual amount of interesting stalls by the roadside selling food (and scarily spare parts for vehicles), there were loads of smiley people crammed into vans who smiles and waved each time they pulled up beside us, but then we saw a sign that said that Phnom Penh was still really near and then, at the hottest point in the day, our bus broke down in the middle of two lanes in an already hectic road. We waited hours for them to fix it and when they gave up we waited for another bus to come from the other direction. The bus was over 40 degrees inside and I’m sure it was hotter outside in the sun. The poor people from the other bus were kicked off their bus and we got on and traveled back for about half an hour (against the traffic that was moving about a metre and hour (no joking), and then, with the help of the police, did a u-turn after halting all of the traffic and bumping into a van containing about 50 people. We didn’t reach our abandoned bus again for another few hours and a journey that should have taken 6 hours, actually took 17 hours! We got to the border after it had closed at about midnight after a ferry ride in the dark. At the border some of the people didn’t get off to go through customs, in the end we heard rumours that they didn’t have passports or visas and so were being smuggled illegally into Vietnam. Once in Vietnam we speeded to HCMC. When we got to the city we were all half asleep after the awful journey when we were woken by a bang, screams and a terrible grinding crushing noise from under the bus. I looked out of my window to see a motorcyclist in the road with blood everywhere. I have to say that then I became a total loser girl and almost fainted and cried. It was the early hours of the morning and it was chaos. Friends of the victim rushed out from nearby and screamed with shock, he was then rushed away and carried by loads of people (each grabbing a limb or a handful of his clothing) and bundled into a taxi. The police soon arrived and the people without passports made a quick exit while the drivers hauled all of their illegally imported beer off the bus and hid it in the dark of the street.

All of the backpackers also made quick exits by taxi to the backpackers area. It was a crazy night and after we re-grouped we all found places to stay and slept off the awful day!