Day 676 - Boats and buses

After enjoying our last few Lao coffees on the deck overlooking the Mekong we jumped aboard a boat, which wound its way out of the four thousand islands and onto the mainland where our minivan awaited to take us to the Lao-Cambodian border - at this point our travel run ended. The corrupt Lao border control expect a US$1 bribe per person to get a stamp out of the country. Most travellers just hand this over and continue the cycle of ripping off tourists. In Asia (and South East Asia in particular) there is a belief that travellers have a lot of money (which comparatively we do) but that also we don't really care about how it's spent. The more people who pay such bribes the harder it is for real budget travellers to keep travelling. For us $1 goes a long way - we only spend under $US10 a day each.

What's worse, is that at this border crossing there are 3 places where you're expected to pay $1 bribe - that's a lot of money! So naturally, we just refused to pay! Although this meant holding everyone up (in fact some people wanted to pay for us, but we refused on principle) we did eventually get away with only paying what we were meant to. Some people were a little resentful of the fact that they paid and we didn't - but we had discussed this on the ride to the border that if you refuse to pay (and persevere with it) then you can get away with it. But as soon as they were asked, they just handed it over willingly no questions asked. So the cycle will continue ...

We arrived in Cambodia spent the next 9 hours either on the bus, waiting for the bus, or in the bank trying to find some way to get money!!

At 8pm we arrived in Ban Lung where it took us ages to find any decent accommodation - this was made harder because tomorrow is Cambodia's week long New Year, and everyone doubles/triples their prices. Eventually though, we found an amazing place where the 4 of us are sharing a beautiful room with a porch overlooking the tree tops of a horizon-spanning forest. We'd recommend anyone coming to Ban Lung to stay at Tree Top Guesthouse - it's great and owner Mr T is super friendly and helpful.
Dinner was a complete disaster that consisted of gruel and bad meat for the meat eaters, and fertilised duck egg for Liv (which Nicole bravely dug into!). Luckily on the way home we stumbled across some steamed pork buns and avocado baguettes to fill us up!

Adlibing it to Cambodia.