Korean Job Discussion Forums

[bourbon street]

Have any of you guys taken a speed boat or a ferry from Saigon to Phnom Penh via the Mekong? I'd like to do this venture in the fall and would like some advice and/or feedback regarding companies offering such a tour, cost, logistics, options, etc. Thanks.

[Bibbitybop]

No, but people in the Travel forum may have.

[Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat]

Not sure if this helps at all, but I once took a cross-river trip from Thailand to Myanmar on a visa run. The so called "speed boat" was in fact nothing more than a crappy little canoe with fish guts on the bottom, propelled by one of those long hand-held propeller things. It seemed fairly sketchy, but actually worked out fine (the scenery was great) and it cost almost nothing. I bet the Mekong would be really beautiful by boat. I say go for it.

[midgic]

I went on that trip about three years ago. It was really really great. I think I still might have some brochures from the tour company but I'll have to dig them out.

[simone]

We did a 3 day trip...

Big boat, tiny boat, switch to a bus for two hours, even tinier boat, overnight in some dinky little town, drink too much, spend the next day hurling off the back of the boat in clear view of the Mekong's largest floating market, (I was quite the entertainment) then another little boat.

Walk a dirt path to leave Vietnam, get into a tiny speed boat where only the driver is wearing a crash helmet (!), and two hours later go through immigration in Cambodia. Not a computer in sight. Dropped off at the "guesthouse" ghetto in Phnom Penh.

Good times. You can pick up a similar package at any tourism place in Saigon.

[gypsyfish]

I did an overnight trip but we didn't leave from HCMC. Technically we did but we left on a bus, toured around the Mekong Delta for a day, spent the night, then got on a boat somewhere in the Delta. Sorry, I don't remember the town.

The trip was fun and cheap. It was pretty cool crossing the border by boat. We had to disembark in Viet Nam, process through customs, walk across the border and process into Cambodia. I glanced at the passport they returned to me and realized that they had given the wrong persons passport. He looked nothing like me, but I found him and we traded.

The boat didn't go into Phnom Penh, either, but we were met by a van and went the last hour across some of the bumpiest roads I have ever been on.

You can find the trip at any of the tour companies in HCMC.

[bourbon street]

Thanks guys. Very helpful. Will absolutely make the trip.

[Roch]

[moredhel_1]

Bourbon Street, email our mutual head-teacher friend, "C". She visited the Mekong, and absolutely loved it. Freakin' went to an island where wild monkeys were jumping all over them and stuff. She didn't want to leave.