Ban Lung, CAMBODIA

    Don't get me wrong, we had a great time in Vietnam and loved it, but it's so nice to be in a place where you can here birdsong because not all of them are eaten or in cages, where people don't swarm you and try to get you to buy something, where not everything is clearcut, and where they can make veggie dishes other than pho or the rice with fake meats that we have been living on.
    The border crossing went smoother than could have been hoped given how little we could communicate with the people at our hotel.  A taxi picked us up around seven and took us to the station where the driver directed us to sit down until the bus left.  It was another van-type bus  but since the three of us sat in a row it was crowded but not too bad.  It took us less than three hours to get to the border.  At one point we stopped in a village to pick up two Germans who had been stranded by their border-bus.  By then most of the other passengers we picked up and dropped off along the way were gone.  A few hundred meters away from the border they stopped in a parking lot with two more buses in it and motioned for us to get off but as they spoke no English and the parking lot was deserted we stayed on.  This was probably a mistake.  I think that, had we gotten on one of those buses, it would have taken us all the way to Ban Lung rather than dropping us at the building to exit Vietnam.
     There were only a few other people before us in the line to exit and after about twenty minutes we walked to the border check and to the building to enter Cambodia.  We got our visas fairly quickly but were waiting for almost two hours for a bus to take us to the city.  The Germans were out of US dollars and were afraid that they would be stuck not able to return to Vietnam and not able to change euros to buy visas to enter Cambodia but the offical changed them for them.  Maybe since it's a small and mostly unused by tourists border nobody tried to scam us.  
     After we had been waiting a while a tour bus (non-van-type-bus) filled with more Germans came and after they all got the visas they let the five of us onto the bus.  It was another two hours until Ban Lung but a lot less cramped.  
     The countryside is a bit clearcut but not so much as Vietnam.  The red dust covers almost everything but there is some green around.
     Once in town we borrowed the bus driver's phone to call our hotel and twenty minutes or so later a tuk-tuk came to pick us up.  I had no idea what it would look like until it arrived, but it turned out to be a motorbike harnessed to a vehicle like an open carriage.  Two benches faced eachother in a wall-less but canopied box with a space in between for luggage.
     Our hotel only has wifi in the half-outside communal area that is used as the lobby, the hotel restaurant, and a place to read or email.  A half dozen wood tables of various sizes are set up on a large balcony overlooking houses and a sparsely-treed valley.  Town is behing a hill but not a long walk.
     We had lunch and dinner at the hotel yesterday and don't see any reason to eat anywhere else for the rest of our time here.  They have many options, both more traditional foods and sandwiches, all with a choice of tofu-substitute.  I don't think I'll be able to blog for the next couple of days but no fear, we will be hiking (not dead).