Hi Shirley glad you had a good trip and as you say Vietnam is great and so cheap but you are a braver person than me getting on one of those bike's I have all on crossing the road.

Hi shirleyV - welcome back.

Sounds as though you had a great trip - look forward to the next bit!

Peter

Vietnam is not expensive at all. If you really want to keep costs down, half litre jugs of Bia Hoi (the local brew) are about 10p. I think we found Saigon more expensive than the rest of Vietnam but it still wasn't ridiculous. Obviously if you went up to the top of the Sheraton for the views from their top bar it was expensive but you would expect that. Standard local restaurants and bars were very good value, and often provided extremely good food.

I am interested to hear what you thought of Phnom Penh. We had 4 nights there back in 2006.

Not much time now but will let you know about Phnom Penh soon , I loved it

Well here are my impressions on Phnom Penh.................it is raw , gritty , crazy and I love it, what a great time we had ! we stayed for 4 nights in the Billabong hotel which was great.
I must admit my first impression was OMG what have I done ?? it is a city that never fails to shock and the poverty is everywhere, but, there is something special about it, the buildings are very delapidated but could be beautiful.
Of course the history of this country is appalling and much of the sightseeing is shocking, we visited the Killing Fields and the S21 prison.
I loved the Russian market and went back 3 times , bought loads of housey things which were a fraction of the cost of similar items in the Pier.
Eating out was fantastic and there are some very good restaurants, we loved the Lemongrass thai restaurant, Shere e punjab Indian, Chiang Mai Riverside Thai, Huxleys bar, we enjoyed a drink or 2 or 3 at the Foreign Correspondant's Club every night.
BoungKak lake backpacker area was (erm) interesting, we must have been offered opium at least 10 times in half an hour!!
I was quite upset to see many people living in the streets and I was horrified to see a teenage girl sniffing glue in the roadside, despite all this though I would go back in a heartbeat , Cambodia is very special to me and the people are fantastic.
Tuk Tuks are about 10 dollars for a whole day and eating out is very cheap, I would say Cambodia is my favourite place ever and I hope to return one day

I loved Cambodia and in the 9 months my Wife and I were away we were not treated any better than there. The kids are absolutely amazing. Our group (about 10 people) were invited to a meal at a family friend of our tour guide in Siem Reap and she laid on the best food ever, and then we danced the night away with the kids. The smiles on their faces was a joy.

By contrast we found the Vietnamease to be a little more sterner and not quite so approachable. We still enjoyed their hospitality on a number of occasions though.

As for Phomn Penh, it's an interesting place. A number of our group couldn't handle the killing fields or the torture prison and it is very graphic in places. It's amazing to think this is relatively recent history, I did find it fascinating but at the same time, very sad. You certainly wouldn't want to go to PP to cheer yourself up!!! I quite liked the bar and restaurant scene there though, but for me Siem Reap won hands down. To be on the doorstep of the Temples of Angkor was amazing but I am slightly concerned just how commercial that area is becoming. There is always the need to build new facilities etc for the ever growing number of tourists visiting but is there really the need for 5* resorts when families are living on less than a dollar a day?

It's probably going to happen anyway but before Cambodia and Vietnam get too much like the very commercialised Thailand, I would recommend getting out and visiting these lovely countries before tourism really takes over.

When I visited Cambodia in 2003 I was amazed at all the luxury hotels that were being built and a young man who worked in the tourist industry in Siem Reap told me that they were hoping to attract 1million tourists in 2004. Unfortunately the SARS epidemic reduced the numbers but I would be interested to know how many tourist are visiting now. I also preferred Seap Reap to Phnom Penh.
As to more 5* hotels being built I am in two minds, the increased tourism obviously provides more employment but most of the hotels are funded from abroad so the profits don't always stay in the country which is desperately poor.
The people seemed very gentle and friendly and I'm hoping to find a similar atmosphere on my trip to Laos in November.

Shirley
not sure I would fancy PP but it sounds like an experience. Would you repeat it?

Saigon- glad the soaring inflation rate hasn't had too bad an effect on prices for eating and drinking. I would love to return. What was the weather like?

PP - would return there in a heartbeat, my favourite Far East city to date, awesome. It was so stimulating, so gritty, just brilliant, loved it

Fiona , the weather in Saigon was absolutely lovely , blue skies and hot sun all the time, just one evening there was a heavy rain shower ( we were in Pho 24 at the time) and it only lasted about half an hour.

well Shirley
you have given me somewhere else to investigate We may well look at Vietnam and Cambodia for next summer( if I can get cheaper prices than my investigations for this summer). Just stuck with where to go for some R&R at the end of the city tours.

That is why we did 3 cities this year instead of beach, just tried to snatch a few hours by the pool when we could , as I said it was great weather so we were lucky , while in PP we went sightseeing early morning then went to the pool for 2 or 3 hours then more sightseeing late afternoon.
Used the pool in Bangkok quite a lot too, we are looking at Ko Phangan for next year's R & R

One of the highlights of our time in Cambodia was the journey from the Thai border to Siem Reap. It was fascinating how the infrastructure changed from Thailand's excellent roads and service stations, to Cambodia's mud tracks. The border crossing was very very interesting. All our baggage was loaded onto hand pulled carts which were then taken out of sight and arrived ready for us after we had shown our passports. Our guide (English) insisted that this was normal but there were a few worried tour members who made that walk.

Also very interesting was the "no mans land" between both border controls which house of all places...........casinos

After the border control it was a mere 10 hour drive down dirt and mud tracks to Siem Reap. People fly into Siem Reap but in my opinion that then means you miss out on one of the world's great journeys. There are potholes, collapsed bridges, traffic coming right towards your coach, kids waving from the side of the road.....it was one heck of an experience. I was glad to see our hotel in Siem Reap at the end of it, but what a day....Bangkok to Siem Reap. Travelling doesn't get any better

I went by boat to Phnom Penh, I had been staying on the Mekong in Vietnam at Can Tho and Chau Doc and I went by boat to Cambodia. When we crossed into Cambodia we had to get off of the boat and hang around for ages in a broken down old building whilst waiting for officials to check passports. The boat then carried on to Phnom Penh. It took quite a lot longer than if we had flown from Saigon but was much more interesting.

Judith,

We did that boat journey but the other way, Phnom Penh to Chau Doc. I remember carrying our backpacks from our hotel which was along the river to the docking station in seriously hot temperatures and then finding out our new friends and fellow tour members had organised their Vietnam visa for a day later. They had to stay in Phnom Penh and organise their own flights to Saigon the for the next day, hence they missed out on the magical Mekong River journey.

I remember our tour guide saying that on his past few visits they had only been interested in looking at passports (and visas) and all the luggage had been able to be left on the boat. Guess what? Yep, this was one day they wanted to scan the luggage as well but you couldn't blame them really. I remember handing over dollars to kids for soft drinks, it really was very hot. I had great fun trying to tell a kid that I wanted Diet Coke and not Coke, but he didn't have any. He then shot off and two minutes later returned with an ice cold Diet Coke.....fantastic.

Chau Doc was an amazing entry into Vietnam. It really was the first chance to see (and for some sample) the Vietnam delicacies such as rat......I opted for copious amounts of Bia Hoi instead (just 10p a pint if that). From Chau Doc it was onwards to Saigon with a river crossing and a totally different side of Vietnam.

Great memories.

Yes, some good memories. We also had to take our luggage off of the boat, it had started to rain at this point and combined with the heat it was pretty sticky. I only visited the south of Vietnam so one of these days I'll be going back to see the north. Would really like to go up to Sapa north of Hanoi as well as Halong.

Halong Bay was very touristy, but I really enjoyed the boat trip and exploration of the caves.

Hanoi is a lovely city, a total contrast to Saigon, much more sedate and for me personally, more of what I expected Vietnam to be like. Don't get me wrong I loved Saigon, but it is another big Asian city and when you are on a round the world, big Asian cities are two a penny (Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Shanghai, Beijing, Phnom Penh to name just a few).

Out of that group above Saigon was probably 2nd only to Shanghai. I liked Singapore but it was very westernised, as was Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok to a slightly lesser degree. Beijing was awful and Phnom Penh was very interesting and different.

The most over-rated place in Vietnam for me was Hoi An. A huge tourist trap.

I would love to go back to Shanghai, it's 18 years since I was there, the Pudong side of the river was mostly fields with very few buildings. From the pictures I have seen it's huge now.

Sounds fascinating Shirley.