Day 9 (May 9, 2012): After an 11 hour bus ride, with a quick stop in Phnom Penh, we arrive in Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon. It's interesting to see how much driving differs in SEA versus the USA. While the driving in Cambodia (particularly Siem Reap) was defined by chaos, the driving here seems much more ordered. What it lacks in chaos it makes up for in pure MOTO MADNESS! Talk about motos everywhere. Thousands of them. It's an amazing sight to see, and I can't wait to try playing frogger across the street to avoid them as they zip around on all four sides of you.

Our bus pulls up to a park near our hostel which is teeming with locals enjoying the cool night air and breeze. Kids play a game similar to hackie sack with something that looks like an enlarged shuttlecock. They play with such dexterity that I wonder which of them will become the next Lionel Messi. We wander out for food, I (Matt) order the sour crab soup and am surprised to receive snail soup with curdled blood. Mmmmmmm.

We head check out the Notre Dame Cathedral, built during the mid to late 1800s, and then head to a rooftop bar overlooking Saigon for some night time drinks and conversation. Bats fly overhead as we peer out at the bustling city. It's a great site to see, and is the largest metro we've been in since Bangkok. We visited a couple more bars (the Pub and Allez Boo) before calling it a night. In the morning (which is as I write this) we will visit the War Remnants Museum, Reunification Palace, some pagodas, and a couple of restaurants recommended by Anthony Bourdain (Vietname is his favorite country after all). In next morning we'll head to the Mekong Delta. We'll follow up with you all then!

Days 6-8: Life on the beach sure is relaxing. By day we work on our sun tans, with the exception of me (Matt) who skips the tan and goes straight for the burn. By night we play the guitar, drink fruity cocktails, meet people and get some night swimming in. We found a log on the beach and pulled it out to the ocean to act as a raft. After awhile, Sam even made some new local friends who hopped on the raft to horseplay around with him!

The water is around 80 degrees, which was perfect for our first scuba diving session. We headed out to Koh Rung Samloem on a rickity old fishing boat with our dive instructors for two dives. The sea got the best of Sam, who decided to feed his dinner from the previous night to the fishes on the way out to the island. Nevertheless, he manned up and we all went for our first dive to a reef about 12 meters deep. The dive was great and full of box fish, barracudas, and an assortment of other fish. The second dive wasn't as exciting, but the wet season officially kicked off during it. Coming up into the sopping rain was quite an experience, especially for Matt who's air ran out early and had to swim 200m in the pouring rain and increasingly large waves back to the dive boat.

That night, Sam got lucky at the Cambodian casinos playing roulette and we partied accordingly. In the morning we packed our things, sad to leave our new friends, and jumped in a cab towards Kampot, Cambodia. You may recognize this quaint french colonial village for it's Kampot Pepper, famous worldwide. The drive to Kampot was something else. As mentioned, the wet season just started so about 45 minutes in it started pouring. And when I say pouring, I mean imagine sitting under Niagra Falls pouring. Nevertheless, our driver decided to continue driving at about 55 mph on a two lane road while viciously overtaking every other car, motorcycle, cow, dog, and bicycle on the road, despite only having about 30 feet of visibility. The City was charming and much cleaner than all the other cities and villages we've seen in Cambodia. After taking in the sunset over the Preaek Tuek Chhu River, framed by an old French bridge and some lucious green mountains in the background, we headed out for some street food (delicious noodles for only $0.75usd) and then called it a night.

Day 5: After a full day bus ride from Siem Reap, we arrived in Sihanoukville, Cambodia. Our hostel was located on a quaint, beach road about 10 miles from the town. After a quick, morning dip in the ocean, we headed into town to visit Matt's college buddy who owns a local bar. We played pool, swam, and climbed out to a rock point to lounge and take in the ocean air. That night, the moon was full and bright for the famous full moon party, which included fireworks, flame throwers and plenty of neon paint. However, the real full moon parties occur in Koh Phanang, Thailand we're we'll be in exactly one month from today.