Days 23-24: End of the Line

"We will build a railway here" they said, despite the mountain on one side and the precipitous drop to the sea on the other.

I arrived at Ho Chi Minh City after a sleepless night in a hot cabin with six people and sixty mosquitos. It took a whole sixty seconds to find a big plate of rice and chicken for breakfast, and sixty more to find a moped driver to take me into town.

There was time to join the early morning exercisers for a couple of laps of the park, before taking to the road. Having run out of rails, I was finally forced to take a bus, crossing the border to Cambodia on the exact date that the law changed and British tourists were required to have a visa for Vietnam. It was another one of those coincidences that must have looked like I planned it perfectly!

Don't ask me about Phnom Penh (the capital of Cambodia), I really couldn't tell you anything. After 24 hours on a train, 6 hours on a bus, and a half hour walk in the afternoon heat, I was aware of nothing beyond cool showers and clean sheets.