Phu Quoc Vietnam to Kep, Cambodia: Forgotten Passports, High Seas, a Fire, and an Attack by Sea Monkeys.

So not every travel day is a great day. Don’t believe what those Insta-Influencers are trying to sell ya. Sometimes things go wrong. Sometimes they go quite wrong. So you need to be prepared for a setback or two.

We always keep the passports in a specific manner, and we run a check (wallets, passports, phones, sunglasses) and a bag count whenever we change locations.

When we left our bungalow in Phu Quoc, two factors distracted us. Firstly, we had saved up literally MILLIONS of Vietnamese dong to pay our bill, and they informed us at the desk that the payment had already been taken by credit card. Most unexpected. What will we do with MILLIONS of dong in Cambodia? O well.

Then, the vehicle booked to take us to the ferry at 8:30 arrived at 8:10 or thereabouts, making us scramble a bit. Never scramble!

Our ferry to Ha Tien, Vietnam, 10 km from the Cambodian border, left at 9:30. The seas were very rough on the windward side of the island. Just getting on board was an adventure. Rand gets seasick, and I was feeling guilty about making him ride a ferry, as he quickly turned gray and clammy.

The ferry. A rough ride in an enclosed space, shared with a load of durian.

I closed my eyes, tried to relax, and Bam! I remembered that when we checked into our resort in Phu Quoc, the reception clerk insisted on keeping our passports in the hotel safe during our stay. This was unusual.

“Did they give us back our passports this morning? Do you have them?” The look on Rand’s face told me they had not. Sh…..oot!

I whipped off an email to the resort, asking them to confirm they still had our passports. I asked them to send someone to the ferry port and hand them over to the captain of the next departing ferry. We would then meet that ferry and collect the documents in person.

But the fact they had not handed them back raised the question, did they even have them? Quickly, the answer, with apologies, was that they did.

After that, I was not very worried. Everything in Vietnam has been so easy, every little problem fixed or sorted. The Vietnamese are natural born fixers. I just knew it would work out.

We had already hired a fixer to take us to the border, and the resort connected with him seamlessly, and hired him to be THEIR fixer. He walked us over to a cafe where we waited 3 and a bit hours.

Hanging out in a port cafe, waiting for our passports.

He met the ferry, got the documents, then completed his task and got us through the border, where we connected with a local who drove us to our prebooked accomodation in Kep.

Leaving Vietnam on foot.

Entering Cambodia

Well that had been a much longer trip than anticipated. But it was over. We had arrived! Alls well, etc, etc.

We piled out at our guesthouse, and noticed a strong acrid smell. The field next to our bungalow, had recently been in flames. Ash covered everything. The power and internet lines had burnt. There was no food to be had, no air con or light in the bungalows, and the smoke in the air reached right down my throat so I could scarcely breath.

Fields still smoking at Blue Kep Bungalows.

Our kind, but dismayed hosts. No electricity, no communications, and shortly thereafter, no Randoneurds.

Luckily, our hosts did not disagree with our desire to find a different place to stay. So we set off in a tuk-tuk (because no internet) to look about. That is how we came, eventually, to Q bungalows. Now, in truth, we could relax.

Fleeing smoky bungalows in a tuk-tuk.

We had an icy beer, and showered the grime and smoke out of our hair and that is when I learned why I had been itchy all day. Turns out it wasn’t only dirt, perspiration and heat. I had a number of itchy red bumps on my torso. Heat rash? Mozzies? Weird.

The Q Bungalows bar had tragically run out of tequila, which qualifies as another catastrophe, only because it happened to be International Margarita Day!

So we wandered off for happy hour at the Sailing Club, which was lovely, and then, just before bed, enjoyed a swim in the pool. Day turned out okay. All mischief managed.

It was a squeaker, but I did manage to celebrate International Margarita Day at the Kep Sailing Club.

The sailing club is the place to go for 3 dollar happy hour, beautiful sunsets and inauthentic but very tasty Poutine.

Only the next morning, the dozen or so bites had turned into 49 – yes I counted! 5 minutes of research and it was clear I had been accosted by jellyfish larvae in Phu Quoc. Worse, the little buggers live on in wet bathing suits, so I’d likely got a second round of stings when I put my damp suit on for a pool swim in Kep. I soaked my suit in kettle boiled water that very moment and laid it out, all day, in the 35°C sun.

So that was quite a few setbacks to deal with in one day. But it isn’t a day we are likely to forget soon, and sometimes it just goes like that.