Kep

We decide to take refuge in Kep, a small coastal town about 30 km from the border. Irish found really nice accommodation: Atmaland resort in Kep national park. We have a roomy bungalow in the middle of a beautiful garden full of bright flowers, exotic trees and wild birds. There are also plenty of mango trees everywhere, dripping delicious fruit that nobody cares to pick up.

After many emails back and forth, the visa company promises to issue an e-visa for Irish by tomorrow 12pm.  We book a second night in Birds of Paradise, a resort just down the road. Actually, if it wasn’t for our flights back departing from Ho Chi Minh, we wouldn’t have bothered with coming back to Vietnam. We spend the next day exploring Kep. An English couple living in Phnom Pen and holidaying in Atmaland kindly let us use their scooter for the day. We zoom around the National Park. Good views but no wild animals spotted.

Kep is the Crab capital of Cambodia, so we then zoom down to the Crab market. We’ve never seen so many crabs and seafood in both our lives!

Kep turns out to be a great place to visit, mainly a Cambodian seaside resort with very few foreign tourists around.

The promised visa arrives on my phone at 12pm on the dot so we zoom again downtown in search of a printing shop before heading to Birds of Paradise. This is a much less posh resort run by an eccentric English man Steven and his Cambodian wife. We are the only guest there. Not very surprising as the place looks more like an animal rescue centre than a resort. The main living area is occupied by cages with various animals, blind cats, three legged dogs, one-wing parrots etc…Mangy animals might not be everyone’s taste comments Irish.

Our Cambodian style bungalow has no Aircon. Despite two big fans, it doesn’t cool down during the night. We don’t really sleep well. Irish is thinking about all the abundant snakes and scorpions around that Steven described in great detail. Frenchie is worrying about having to cross the border again in the morning.

Next morning, we are picked up by the same minibus company. I’ve got butterflies in my stomach thinking of Herr Flic, the Vietnamese border officer.  Anyway, Irish hands in her passport and brand new visa. It’s a yes! She’s through. But when it comes to Frenchie’s passport, Herr Flic asks: where is your visa? If eyes could kill, he’d be dead and buried by now. I tell him, as he said exactly two days ago, I don’t need a visa. Finally, after more grilling from Herr Flic, I’m allowed in.