Krong Kampot, Cambodia

After our peaceful break lazing about on Phu Quoc, it's time for our final, and busiest, week of the trip. We're headed to Cambodia with three different cities to see in 7 days. First step is getting there, so it's an early taxi across the island to the ferry port. Despite the fact that Phu Quoc is much closer to Cambodia than Vietnam, we have to travel back east to a port in Vietnam as we must cross the border by land. Luckily the ferries are fast catamarans which take less than 90 minutes to the city of Ha Tien. It also appears that even though the ferry is practically full, we're the only people who paid for the upgrade to VIP class (€4 extra!) so we have the whole section to ourselves.

Once back on land it's time to negotiate with the taxi drivers for a trip to the border and onwards to Kampot. Many of the locals specialise in helping tourists across the border and it's not long before we're in a car for the 15 min drive to the border while our fixer zips ahead by bike. Crossing the border involves three passport checks, x-raying of the bags and a passport stamp, just to get out of Vietnam. Then we have to drag the bags about 200m through no-man's land on a dusty road with absolutely zero shade (did I mention it's 34 degrees?!) to the Cambodian side. The process is convoluted but goes smoothly, and includes delights such as paying an extra dollar because we haven't brought passport photos... which they don't need anyway as they use a webcam and electronic fingerprinting!

Once we make it through we're happy to see our onward car waiting for us for the 60 minute journey to Kampot, where we arrive after a hot and bumpy journey (the roads are in a very bad state!) to our riverside bungalow, which thankfully has decent air conditioning so we can finally cool down.

With only one night in Kampot we head back in to the centre after a couple of hours, for some gentle sightseeing and dinner. It's strange to see TukTuks everywhere, as they don't exist in Vietnam. The best thing is that we can book them using the same Grab app that we used for taxis throughout Vietnam. However it's our first introduction to Cambodia's confusing dual currency, as they use both US Dollars and Cambodian Riels. There are 4000 Riels to the dollar, so generally you have to pay in dollars (unless it's something very cheap) but get your change in Riels!

After a reasonably early night it's back into town for lunch before heading to the bus station for our onward journey. This time we take a slightly larger "Remorque" Tuktuk - basically a motorbike towing a carriage - as we have the bags with us. Our coach to Phnom Penh is practically empty meaning we can spread out and relax for the 3.5 hour drive, and arrive fairly cool and rested for our three days in the capital!