"You sit there,"

9/26 - Sihanoukville, Cambodia to Chau Doc, Vietnam

7:30am - I enjoy my last breakfast at the oasis of calm that is the Rega Guesthouse (crepe w/ jam, bread, OJ, coffee). Check out.

8:00 - meet the bus driver, Xam, who will be taking me to the town of Kampot, the springboard town to Vietnam. I'm the only passenger. "Full yesterday," Xam says. Tyler's solo expedition continues.

10:00 - arrive in Kampot. Slide into a tuk tuk which will take me to the border.

10:45 - what started as pleasant tour through the Cambodian countryside rapidly errodes into an Asian reenactment of the 90's Windows classic: Oregon Trail. Only this time I did not stop at the general store to stock up on ammunition and axels. I consider asking the driver if we can hire an Indian before fording the overflowing rice patty.

11:45 - driver tells me to switch over to a moto driver, he'll take me over to Vietnam.

12:00pm - no tour buses at the border, or westerners, for that matter. International boundary line between Cambodia and Vietnam is a wooden stick. I walk into Vietnam with several gaggles of ducks. They don't need visas.

12:10 - arrive in Ha Tien. Driver attemps to bridge the language barrier in telling me there are no more buses leaving from Ha Tien to Chau Doc today. I need to go to Ba Chau, one hour away to get one, he says. "Ten more dolla," he says. I pay. Something seems amiss.

12:14 - thoroughly sunburned.

12:40 - driver transfers me to another moto driver who can take me to Ba Chau. On the way out of town he tells me Ba Chau is "very far," and I should just take the bus. I knew it.

12:50 - putter in to the Ha Tien public station where the 2:00 bus to Chau Doc is sitting. I thank my driver profusely and think of ways beyond smiling and giving him the thumbs up to show my appreciation for his honesty. I doubt he'd appreciate using my dental floss for his one front tooth....

2:00 - I share the bus with an unabashedly vocal market woman. Bus crawls out depot and moves at walking speed down the road. After 20 minutes of the bus attendant shouting out the door I gather we're trying to pick up customers. Slowly, we do.

2:58 - I see a sign above the driver advertising tickets for this bus at 45,000D. I'd been charged 90.000.

3:18 - large, purple unisuit-clad female vendor boards bus ata pit stop. Aggressively, she tries to sell me throat lozenges.

5:30 - arrive in Chau Doc. Bicycle rickshaw pedals me to my hotel: the Hang Chua II. I wonder what happened to the Hang Chua I.

6:00 - at hotel. Nearly out of Dong. Set out amidst night fall and lightning-filled sky to find ATM. Fifth one's a charm. Fearing I'll be stranded there I withdraw maximum amount allowed.

7:12 - shower off the dust, dirt, and odd duck feather and fall asleep halfway through a pack of M&Ms.

9/27 - Chau Doc to HCMC

7:30am - 15 passenger bus leaves from hotel. "You sit there," the driver instructs me, pointing to the single open seat in the last row between 3, gruff looking men. One of them strokes my arm as if to see if my skin were real. "The best leather Ipswich has to offer," I say. He chortles and looks away.

2:00pm - haven't felt either of my butt cheeks for nearly four hours. No hope of sleeping as we safari-drive our way over the rock tumbled roads of the Mekong Delta region. I figure my best shot at minimal comfort is to go completely limp and roll with the punches.

2:15 - HCMC.

2:35 - I check back into the Phoenix 74. I never thought I'd feel happy to be back in Saigon.