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- Apr 3, 2025
- ☀️ 34 °C
- Altitude: 13 m
VietnamChâu Đốc10°41’47” N 105°6’1” E
Boarders and Bridges to be Crossed

With our good supply run the previous day, it was musllie, yogurt, fruit, bread and honey for breakfast (The honey was from Siem Reap’s non-timber first products festival). We then packed up and were met by our tuk tuk driver from the previous day, who then took us to a Pepper Farm, before taking us to the Cambodia/Vietnam Boarder.
We visited the BoTree Pepper farm, a small farm operated by a Scottish/Khmer couple, with 21 full time employees and 60+ at harvest season. We learnt allot about pepper farming, the different kinds of pepper (black, white and red) that all come from the same plant, and what makes Kempot Pepper unique. The tour ended with a pepper tasting, that by the end, quite frankly, just tasted pepper.
As the tour and tasting took a little longer than anticipated, we decided to have lunch at the farm and it was excellent! Probably the most flavourful meal since we had been in Cambodia. We finished our lunch off with pepper ice cream that was significantly better than anticipated!
Back onto our tuk tuk and off to the boarder. I do recommend travelling by tuk tuk as much as possible, however, be prepared to be a bit dustier at the end of the ride and your cloths will need a good wash.
The boarder crossing went relatively well, but at our 3rd check stop in the process, an error was discovered on one of the visas. One of the boarder agents told us to stay put then hopped on a motor bike with all our documents in hand. A semi-nervous five minutes later he was back with the correction made. We were then allowed to move on. Now through the entire exiting Cambodia and entering Vietnam process, we did have one very insistent cabbie pushing to take us where we needed to go. Our usual approach to this is they do not get our business and brush them off. Today however,we just wanted to move things along and agreed to a $9 ride that should have been a $5 ride. We would just make up the difference later by not feeding one of the kids. All good.
Something of note,as soon as you cross the boarder, the milieu of tuk tuks is gone. None. It made me a little sad.
Any-who, we made it safely to our hotel. Another case of us being the only guests, but all was well. Quick showers to de-grit then we headed to the downtown core. Now we knew we were only about 1.5km away and had to cross a bridge, but we were unaware of the perils of attempting said crossing. Gone are the days of most Vietnamese traveling by bicycle as it is well replaced with scooters and motor bikes. The hoards of said bikes coupled with transport trucks, buses and cars on a “4-lane-ish” bridge with no walk way was interesting to say the least. We did have at least on motorist who seemed concerned for our survivability and advised us to walk with traffic rather than against it. That or he was increasing his odds in an unseen bet with his companions. With a mix of luck and mixed experience from other parts of the world, we managed to make it across without any losses.
A bit of a wander around, hit a bank machine, grabbed a drink,emergency feeding of Drew, bought some fruit for breakfast, dashed back across the bridge and to bed.
A nice end to our time in Cambodia and a good start to our time in Vietnam.Read more