Day 4
Country
Went out for breakfast early-ish and when we ordered coffees we got all the component parts for iced coffees which we had to put them together ourselves which was interesting. On the way back we saw a 'coffee house' with a logo almost identical to Starbucks hoping to get hot coffee. We got coffee so strong it made your teeth curl!
We packed up and left hoping to see the floating market in action (we had seen just the boats so far with no merchandise on them). We did find a market and rode through it even. Floating it was not.
From there we headed north towards Cambodia. The border was about 200 kms away where we arrived some 7 hours later having ridden through fair, single carraigeway roads.
At the Long Khot border post, one of the security guards turned my ignition off and before I knew it had confiscated the keys. He kept saying "bbabbo" bbabbo" which after quite some time we understood to be passport! We had been given some bad advise by the bike hire company staff to not show any authorities our passports or they'd confiscate them and ask for bribes. On reflection, that's what border security guards do - they want to see passports. That's the gig. However, naiively, we played dumb for a little while which only intimidated him further. He called his superior on the phone who was there like a shot on his bike. Luckily for us he was calm and explained to us that that particular border crossing was for Cambodian and Vietnamese citizens only. Therefore we were not allowed to cross there. Instead he directed us to another nearby crossing at Moc Hoa, about 15 km away, where we could legitimately cross over to Cambodia. I got my keys back and we hightailed it out of there!
It was getting late and the sun was going down so we headed back to the nearest town of Vinh Hung and got a hotel room hoping to give the broder crossing another crack the next day.
