The Viet Nam summary

Well, I'm trying to keep up with the blog. It's not easy, so I want to apologize to those who are keeping track of people through the posts. We're in Thailand, it's Saturday night here, and the whole crew from Loyola, both MBA programs are now together. We had a great first day, and I'll get to that soon.

So, the last post ended as we crossed into Vietnam, more specifically after we checked out at the border in Cambodia. We pile back into the boat, and cruise to the Vietnam entry point, where we are handed our passports by Kim and walked to a gate with two Vietnamese soldiers admitting people through the border after a cursory look at the passports. Here's Jeff crossing.

After the five of us (including our new friends Joao and Cristina) crossed the border, we handed our passports back to Kim, who walked us to an area where a bunch of other tourists (all Europeans) stood by. We stood around for a while, and locals sold me some cookies while the others bought some beers. The kids were great sales people, and they're so cute, it's hard to say no.

After a long time, Kim came back and gave us our passports. I'm a little fuzzy on the next few steps, but I believe that we got back on the boat and floated down the river, and then headed toward Chau Doc. At some point, we picked up our guide, Huy, who would accompany us the rest of the week and was really great. He took care of us and was incredibly knowledgeable. He's a small guy, and might weigh 100 pounds. He told us his nickname is Skinny, and I know that I called him Skinny for the first hour or two, but from then on we called him Huy.

I'm pretty sure we met him at the dock. From there, we went directly to the cave pagoda, a temple on the mountain. The views were incredible, and you can see them here. Prepared to be bored and amazed at the same time. You'll see Huy for a bit.

We really enjoyed this, our first experience in Viet Nam. We went there even before going to the hotel. We could see the Cambodian border from there, and we learned that the people in the village fish, grow rice, and smuggle. When they can't do the first two, they cross over into Cambodia and buy cheap product, which they bring back and sell to make money.

Jeff just walked in, thankfully, and I was able to get some clarification. We did meet Huy at the dock in Chau Doc, and we also dropped of Joao and Cristina at their hotel's dock before we met up with Huy. So, they did not come to cave pagoda. It's amazing how much we crammed into 3 days!

Unfortunately, I'm not going to get to adding comments to the pics tonight, and they're kind of out of order. So, you'll have to figure out what's what. LOL! Have fun.

After cave pagoda, we went to our hotel, the Chau Phat. It was nice. I was surprised at how nice it was (it wasn't anything like an intercontinental, but it wasn't the Roll-On-Inn, either). We cleaned up, and then we went to meet J and C for dinner at a place called Bay Bong. Here's a good pic of Jeff clarifying the bill--as a good finance guy always does:

This was the beginning of a crazy week. I have so much to tell, but it's midnight here, and I'm very beat. The things that we did and saw were really something else, and you'll see them too when I post the link tomorrow.

See ya!