Cambodian Chronicles. Zoo in the airport

 

Our flight to Cambodia was at 8:20am, and since Saigon Airport is right next door, I assumed we could quickly have breakfast in the morning (the breakfast area opened at 6:30) and then take a taxi to the airport by seven. The hotel immediately dismissed this idea because for international flights, one should apparently arrive 3 hours early. They promised to prepare food packs for us.

So, we ordered a taxi at 5:45, and we were at the airport by 5:55. The check-in line took about an hour because by six, they hadn't even opened it yet. Plus, the check-in girl didn't care that we could significantly reduce the contents of our bags by eating more and wear more clothes. She insisted on checking in the bag.

With check-in done, we entered the chaos of security and immigration. The lines moved as there was space for the crowd, and mostly, they didn't move at all. After about 45 minutes, we finally got through. From getting out of the taxi to reaching the gate, it took exactly two hours. Good thing we listened to the hotel :)

Sihanoukville Airport resembled a small hangar in the middle of a vast emptiness. Somewhat surprising, as Sihanoukville has grown rapidly in the last decade and currently has one of the country's largest resorts.

Immigration was as confusing as ever – we gave fingerprints, showed our printed visa, and filled out an entry declaration. After stamping the passport, we moved to the next table, where they checked the now-stamped visa (stamp: "used") and the passport. The young man asked where I was from, then looked at my passport photo again, stared at me, and declared that I am cute, allowing me to go get my luggage.

The taxi, which was supposed to take us from the airport to the port in 45 minutes, took about 20 minutes. We bought ferry tickets, a bottle of water, and waited for our white sailboat.

45 minutes later, we landed on Koh Rong Island, on Long Set Beach. Another hour later, we got into our room.

We had lunch, went swimming. The water is warmer than in a bathtub. We also went out for dinner, where we ordered fried corn cakes and were served regular fried canned corn. But if you exclude that random corn, everything else was excellent. We tried to watch the sunset, but since the sun set on the other side of the island, there wasn't much to see.

Good Morning, Vietnam! Street food hunt

We kicked off the morning with the most important task – right after breakfast and some infinity pool swimming, we headed straight to the nearest Starbucks, where I bought both the Vietnam and Saigon, sorry, Ho Chi Minh City mugs.

After that crucial mission, we tackled the next important thing and ventured into the mall, rumored to have a Dairy Queen. Turns out, it also had Uniqlo with super awesome prices, so we restocked our supplies. We had each one Dairy Queen blizzard and then set our course for the city's best Pho bistro. Pho is the most famous Vietnamese soup, with a beautiful light broth, rice noodles, beef, and herbs. Super delicious!

On the way back to the hotel, we made a pit stop at a market. Turns out, some things never change – the indoor market was still full of goods, and you could only move sideways. The air quality hadn't improved in the meantime either.

For the dinner, we chose a seafood street and picked one joint, where you could clearly see what they were grilling. Since the menu didn't help much, I went to the grill and pointed to what we wanted. Grilled lobster and octopus were our choices. The lobster was superb; the octopus had probably died of natural causes.

Paying the bill revealed that the lobster's cost covered our three-day food budget.

Good Morning, Vietnam! Evolution of the backpacker

Saturday started still on board of the Finnair plane. The pilot hit it off, and despite the delayed takeoff, we arrived in Bangkok ahead of schedule. Since we had Saigon tickets immediately booked, we strolled into the Vietnam Airlines transfer area. We tried explaining to two girls guarding the entrance that we had the next flight and needed to reach our new gate without going through Thai immigration. They inspected our passports and my phone, then sent us to the adjacent information desk for clueless tourists to figure out where to go. Turns out, we had to go through the very door the girls were guarding. After another thorough check of all documents, they allowed us to enter. We went through security, left them our can of coke, and walked to the Saigon flight gate.

On the way to the restroom, I discovered a Dairy Queen and pictured myself enjoying a chocolate blizzard at the gate. As I started selecting the perfect blizzard, the lady behind the counter calmly informed me they didn't have blizzards. Instead, the tourist could opt for a hot dog or soft-serve ice cream.

The tourist wanted neither and went to the adjacent stand to buy the country's most expensive orange cold-pressed coffee.

During the Saigon flight, a sandwich was offered, but they had forgotten to add anything to it except the untoasted toast. Coffee pouring was cancelled due to turbulence. However, thw same turbulence didn't interfere with tea pouring.

At the hotel, we took a quick nap as our first move and then headed into the city for dinner. We visited the backpacker street, which had transformed beyond recognition in 14 years. Previously filled with cheap "hole in the wall" places and mini plastic furniture extending onto the road, it was now replaced by completely empty bars with black leather sofas and stools. We tried eating an ultra-spicy mango salad and walked to the street food market.

Good Morning, Vietnam! About efficiency

The lady of the house said goodbye to us yesterday, because today at 9am when the taxi she called us, was supposed to pick us up, she was in school for the parents meeting. Obviously she has more unreasonable belief in vietnamese accurateness than we did, because when she returned at 9:15, we were still there. Anyway, at some point before 9:30 the car pulled in and appr. at 10am we were in the airport. As it turned out, 2 hours prior departure was fairly last minute considering the non-efficiency of the Vietnamese. There were three counters opened for Bangkok flight: check-in (we had checked in online), luggage drop off (we had none) and document check. That's what we needed. There was exactly one couple in front of me, with huge amount of luggage. Dealing with their check in took 10 minutes and already it was my turn. By that time there were three long lines waiting and it didn't seem that any of them was concerned about standing in correct line. Also to the passport check people were let in in small groups.

Still remembering the cheap prices in Hanoi airport, we had planned to have lunch before boarding, but the airport restaurants had other plans. Croissant with two slices of tomato and mozzarella was 6.50 USD. We had french fries in Burger King. We actually also had a gourmet trip planned last night, but it didn't really worked like planned. I had read on an more or less official Hoi An web page that if you haven't eaten grilled rice papers and mango cakes, you haven't been to Hoi An. So we went to the island, where there was supposed to be lots of the mentioned rice paper. What wasn't there, was the rice paper. We had some french fries. Back on the better known streets I got that highly praised mango cake, which turned out to be tasteless gluey thing. So much of the authentic gourmet.

In Bangkok we asked in the information, where does the bus go to town. According to the information by Exit 6. There we were, standing in the bus stop by Exit 6 until one moment our bus No A4 was just driving past us. A4, apparently doesn't stop in the bus stop by Exit 6, but randomly by Exit 4. Next A4 departed half an hour later. At least it wasn't cold to wait there.

We had planned visiting Unicorn Cafe and later some shopping for tonight. We started with the cafe. Since 25 cake layers speak more than 1000 words, look at the pictures. We visited Thann and Uniqlo in Siam and went to the bus stop to get back to the hotel. After half an hour there was the bus and another half an hour later we were in the hotel.

Good Morning, Vietnam! Experts have spoken

Racist has spoken (see Helena's comment in yesterday's post), the customer service critic will have a word now (Gaili, the expert). Even the most critical tourist (to be precise tho, it's constructive critics!) can understand that each country has it's own rules and habits. And if Vietnamese sales persons would have sales in their blood, that's how it should be taken. However, I've yet to see that they treat locals like long lost relatives. Tourists don't even have to slow down when they already get called to taste some gourmet or buy some souvenirs. And should you actually stop to check a menu, you can be sure that there will be one waitress turning the pages for you and reading the menu out loud for you and another one behind you ready to tackle you down the second you try to run. If you ask for a price of something, they first want to know, how many items you want to buy. Well, how many skirts can one tourist buy? If you go to grocery store and want to know the price of a water, they don't tell you the price, but jump up, go to the fridge, bring it to you and tell the price then. Instead of just telling the price. Despite having a whole crew of a restaurant just for you while you study the menu, turning the pages for you, reading it to you and promising you heaven on eat, everything changes the second you have a seat. Nobody cares. Today we waited an hour for our french fries.

I do have to add something to a recent, somewhat critical post. We happened to chat with the lady of the house today and it turned out, she's not the owner, but managing director also known as jack of all trades here. She's responsible for all the check-in-check-out (besides us, there is only one room occupied at the moment), cleaning (she's bringing us fresh towels and brings out the trash daily) and well, EVERYTHING! Anyway, she lives onsite and is slaving her bodypart off for 7 days a week. Doing all the things I just mentioned. Her son, the one, lying on the couch all day, is Henry. 12 years old, going to 6th grade and is the second best in his class. Wakes up 5:30 every morning and goes to school that is in the town (I do hope, not walking). I hope, I've brought justice to the topic and it's clear that there are hardworking people here, not some lazy bodyparts.

Today, btw, we started with going to the beach. We went especially early, but turned out there were more sleepless people trying to beat the crowds. The sky was cloudy and looked like rain coming in. Half an hour later the sun was shining bright and kept shining until it was time to set. We decided to skip lunch and go to town. Helena had ordered one more bag and that one needed to be picked up. We ate some rolled ice cream on the night market and took the taxi back to the hotel.

Good Morning, Vietnam! Why are the whitening products so popular here

The day started with beach time. I decided to have a litlle walk along the beach after swimming today and walked about 3,5 km. Turned out that our part of the beach has the cleanest and whitest sand.

For lunch we had fruit plates with slightly fermented water melon (as said there are less and less suitable places left to eat in) in Joy's Restaurant with "Last Christmas" as background and ordered a cab to go to town. I see in the app that the cab is pulling in and when we arrived on the street it turned out to be true. It can very well be that he wasn't happy with his clients, because he continued driving. I made some faster steps to reach the car and waived first with one then with both hand, but the car continued driving. Once it even turned on another street, I walked back to wifi and let him know that I will not keep on running after cars and he should kindly drive his vehicle back to where we are waiting. Helena's only comment was that since lot of people we have met recently are not the brightest light bulbs, the whitening products must be so popular.

We went in one silk store and came out another souvenir store until it was time to go to the night market. We had watermelon and banana pancake and grilled rice paper. We also visited a leather store, where the owners kid had gotten too tired and slept on the floor.