Ok so it wasn't quite Martin Sheen going up the Mekong in a gunboat into the darker recesses of Cambodia to find a renege commando. I was going in the opposite drection from Phnom Penh down the Mekong to Vietnam. It wasn't the most taxing of border crossing trips. The only annoyance were the number of stupid questions asked by the tour group on my boat. I'm pretty sure Martin Sheen would have killed them all before Marlon Brando got his hands on them.
There were about 20 passengers aboard the majority of whom were on an Interpid tour from Bangkok to Saigon via Siem Reap. The Intrepid group were chatty and friendly. They did seem to spend a great deal of their time asking stupid questions and once one stupid question had been asked someone else in the group would repeat it. The tour guide appeared to be a bit tired of stupid questions. I think if you put people in a group and give them a leader who is designated as all knowing then they are going to ask stupid questions. The independent part of the brain switches off and sheep mode is activated. I'm not anti-tour but I don't think its necessary to do the tour they were doing especially as they flew sections of it.
The journey down the Mekong from Phnom Penh to the border took about 3 hours. There wasn't a great deal to see but it was a relaxing change to the madhouse that is Phnom Penh. The river is wide and there appear to be few settlements along it and very few boats out on the water. Vietnam is an immediate contrast. Even so it is a relaxing way to make your way to Vietnam and good value considering the amount of time it takes. It took an hour to reach Chau Doc from the border. This section of the journey was the most interesting of the trip. The river narrowed and there was a massive increase in settlements lining the banks aswell as boats in the water. One of the noticeable things with the settlements in Vietnam were the number of TV antennas. I had not seen so many dominating a skyline of a town anywhere else in South-East Asia.
Cambodian immigration was the prettiest border crossing I have been to. The imigration huts were in a wooded enclave next to the river with mango trees. There was hardly anyone there. Vietnamese immigratiuon and customs was a great deal more rigmarole. Firstly we got off the boat and climbed up a muddy bank. A border guard checked out passports. Another guard took out passports and we were all sent into a room for 5 minutes where there were toilets and signs about SARS. After a couple of minutes we were taken out of the room (nothing happened in the room). We were walked further along the riverbank where the local child sales team descended with drinks and snacks for sale aswell as a roving money exchange. We were made to stand inside a hut for about 5 minutes and then walked down to a small pontoon where our boat had docked. We took our bags to another building and everyone had their bags x-rayed. We took our bags back to the boat. We then twiddled our thumbs for an hour and a half waiting for our passports to be returned. The Intrepid guide reckoned this was longer than normal.
I travelled on the Hang Chau Tourist Express boat from Phnom Penh to Chau Doc. The Hang Chau Tourist Express departs Phnom Penh at 12.30pm from the boat dock almost in the centre of town. It cost $19, though the price was going up to $22. If you want to travel by boat to Vietnam from Phnom Penh there are 4 options. 1) Expensive cruise all the way to Saigon (aka Ho Chi Minh City) 2) Local slowboat 3) Bluecruiser boat 4) Hang Chau Tourist Express. The Hang Chau boat isn't meant to be quite as nice as the Blue Cruiser, but the Bluecruiser costs $10 more. They give you sandwiches and some water for the $10 extra. The Hang Chau boat seemed quite well maintained and the Captain had everything well in hand.
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