Cambodia to Vietam - A New Border Crossing

We traveled along the coast from Sihanoukville to Kep, where we hoped to find onward transportation to a border crossing between Kep, Cambodia and Ha Tien, Vietnam. This crossing had only been open for 2 moths and we had not met anyone who had used it. We expected the trip to be quite an adventure and were prepared for anything.


Kep was an old french colonial resort town, destroyed by war, and not really recovered or rebuilt yet. Like much of coastal Cambodia, however, it won't be long before it turns into resort mania. For now there are mostly bombed out buildings.


The critters seem to like it, and this was one of the few places we saw wild monkeys (gibbons).


Not to exaggerate, however, there were some local inhabitants and a few small hotels.


We found a driver to take us 20 km to the border in his tuk tuk (motorcyle with passenger trailer)...

...and hit the road.

Our transportation was about the best to be found in this little corner of the world.

Soon we were in the middle of nowhere.

When we go close to the border our driver said he could not go on, for fear of being arrested by the Vietnamese. Also, in the end the road wasn't good enough even for the tuk tuk. He passed us off to two Vietnamese motorcycle taxi drivers, one of whom he knew, and helped us negotiate a fair rate for the rest of the journey. On the back of these two motorcycles we crossed over the border, stopping to have our passports stamped on either side, and continue 10 km further to the first town we came upon, Ha Tien, Vietnam. We had been prepared for some challenges but upon arriving in Ha Tien we felt that we had made the crossing in good hands, as smoothly as possible.