I woke up with mixed feelings today. On one hand I couldn’t wait to be able to ride my bike again and on the other I had to ride it back to Cambodia and in fact I wasn’t even sure that I would find the bike where I left it. When, after the two-hour bus ride from Ho Chi Minh City to the border, I finally arrived I found it intact. I can’t describe how happy I was at that point. At least one thing didn’t go wrong and it was the main one – I still had a bike to ride!

When I finished packing up the customs officers I already knew quite well from the past two weeks and my several appearances on the border invited me to have lunch with them. I already mentioned before that they were nice and this only confirms that. So I had fish and vegetables plus rice. I think they wanted to kill me by making my stomach burst as they were re-filling my rice bowl as soon as it was empty even though I pleaded that I couldn’t eat any more. But still, when I really couldn’t stuff any more into me they ate twice as much. It must be my shrunk stomach… ;-) Or are the Vietnamese really such big eaters? This lot certainly had the proper round bellies for it… :-)