It turns out that the homestay electronic payment method only works if you have a cambodian bank account (whoops). A last minute tuktuk into town to nearest ATM, including hectic asking him to wait while I grab cash, before returning after our tuktuk to the bus has already arrived! (Thankfully we were mostly packed last night). We picked up a second couple, well half of one, as with our bags he had to ride on a motorcycle following and thus starts one of the great dramas of our trip.

Early on the ride from their accommodations to the bus station, the motorbike carrying our German co-passenger’s other half took a different turn. The bike was too small to be picking up anything (or anyone) else, but he wasn’t there when we three checked in. And he wasn’t there when the two of us got on the bus. Reader, it took until movie-like, last-minute timing, as our 15 person bus pulled away, the bike finally pulled up with the missing Kraut. Eh travel days can be slow, and other people’s drama is hard to come by for us. 

Half our bus got off at Kep, one-time vacation home for prince-turned-king-turned-prime-minister-turned-political-house-prisoner Norodom Sihanouk turned beach town, and 7 of us continued on towards Vietnam. As we approached the border, the driver stopped, snapped a photo of our motley septet, (a Spaniard, two Norwegian boys, a French woman, an older French man, and us), and gestured towards an official looking building. 

We collectively shrugged at each other and headed towards the largest building. After finally finding the correct entrance, we reached the exit counter and were stamped as having exited Cambodia. Suddenly we realize: what if our Vietnam visas get rejected? We’ve already left Cambodia on our single entry visa, we don’t have more cash to get back into Cambodia, what if we are forced to spend the rest of our days living in the casino that appears to be between the borders of the two countries…with these, and other, questions of our future adding to the intensity of our border crossing, we exited by the gestured-at door, and were met with an empty parking lot. Not another sign in sight. 

We bravely rolled our bags across the asphalt in the original direction of our motion across the border, and eventually found some Cambodian guards that check that we have, in fact, gotten our exit stamps, and vaguely gesture in the direction we had been moving. Our clearest sign of moving in the right direction, we pass a large monument, presumably indicating the border location, and are met by a jovial Vietnamese guard who also checks that we have left Cambodia. 

Our entry is processed quickly, and we are met by a guy who must have had our picture sent to him from our original driver (very “trust the process” here). We get in a van with some of our original septet, the other 3 having turned south towards Phu Quoc, and we stop very quickly at a bus station. After some confusion and some waiting, we find ourselves in yet another van, finally destined for Can Tho. Our long drive through the southern countryside takes us through towns and fields, basked in the glow of a beautiful setting sun. We also appear to be merely another pair of parcels, as we stop frequently to take on and drop off packages of various size and weight. Eventually, we stop in a gas station and are told we have arrived. 

The sun has long since set and, after our sleepy days in Kampot and the quiet countryside we have seen that day, the sheer number of people passing through the neighboring intersection is overwhelming. The sound of hundreds of cars and motorbikes and people knocks us off balance, and the accosting by a half-dozen young men on motorbikes asking us where we want to go is a rude awakening from the slow pace of the rest of the day. We awkwardly pull our bags past them and to the corner to call a grab, but our adventure isn’t over yet. Seemingly on his first ride, the driver doesn’t know how to accept the ride and continually asks us for direction as we frantically look up how to say left and right in Vietnamese. After 20 minutes that felt like an hour, we are dropped at the end of a long road that snakes along a narrow canal. Unfortunately, we picked the wrong side of it to walk down, and a very nice woman who drastically overestimated our ability to understand Vietnamese gestures us towards the other side, where we find our homestay, have a quick dinner, and collapse. 

We'd had, and have since had, longer travel days. But this one might have felt the longest.