Tour: Vietnam-Thailand-Cambodia. Duration - 20 days, May-June 2008.
I'm not writing for someone to get some new information, but rather just to publish an essay about the rest. If friends will pester how I had a rest, I will simply point to a link on the Internet where you can read everything and see some photos.
The trip began with the fact that a friend who works with me in the same organization asked if you would like to go on vacation in June to Vietnam? And that he and his friend want to go there. I replied that I was ready to go to Vietnam even tomorrow. No, the day after tomorrow, because you still need to have time to apply for a vacation and sign the order of the head. But he made a counter offer that if we fly to Southeast Asia, where we fly for more than 8 hours and pay 1000 bucks for air tickets, then we need to relax there longer, for example, not the standard 14 days in one city, but visit two countries for 10 days.
So we decided: 10 days in Vietnam and 10 days in Thailand.
Vietnam Airlines flew from Moscow from Vnukovo on May 26 on a Moscow-Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) flight. Round-trip tickets cost about 23.500 rubles. In the package with the tour operator "Foundation of Peace" (E-Burg), in addition to tickets, they also paid for hotel rooms in Vietnam for 10 days. Hotel in Saigon ELIOS HOTEL - 60 USD/day per room for one, and in Nha Trang YASAKA SAYGON HOTEL - 80 USD/day per room for one. These were standard double rooms provided to one tourist. My comrades lived in a double room together, so their accommodation cost them almost half as much for each. The first transfer from Saigon airport to the hotel was also immediately booked.
The Vietnam Airlines flight was not a charter one, but a regular one, so there were only a few tourists there. Mostly Vietnamese, apparently living and working in Russia. Beautiful flight attendants, delicious food, a couple of bottles of cognac from duty free - the flight went well.
By the way, Vietnamese airlines serve alcohol once, but you can ask for more. This is for lovers.
We had to get a visa at the airport upon arrival. On the plane, we were given immigration cards to fill out. And the visa application forms were given to us at the visa department at the Saigon airport. By the way, I printed out such a form from the Internet in advance, there are dubbed in Russian, who have problems with Vietnamese or English. Otherwise, at the port you will have to queue 2 times: first for the form and then to hand it over. Those who received a visa in Russia immediately went to passport control. The visa processing time at the airport is about 40 minutes. I invested 20 bucks in my passport and the three of us got visas in just 3-5 minutes. You can invest 5 bucks in your passport, this will speed up the process. Having received a visa - through customs and into the city.
At the Saigon airport, we were met by a local man with a piece of paper on which the name of one of us was written in English. He put us in a minivan and we drove into the city to the hotel.
ELIOS HOTEL 3* is located on the busy Pham Ngu Lao Str. in the southern part of Saigon, district 1 (District 1). The hotel has a Russian TV channel RTV, which seems to be delayed by 6 hours. The room has a standard package of options: a wide bed, TV, safe, minibar, hairdryer, bath, etc. In the lobby for guests there is free unlimited internet.
Nearby on the streets there are many other hotels, houses with Room for rent, travel agencies, shops, a shopping center. Also to the right, there is a good barchik, decorated in a cowboy style, with live music a la USA. Right across the park is Notre Dame Cathedral.
Two blocks south of our hotel there is a shopping center, all kinds of rags, electronics, various suitcases, bags, coffee and tea, flowers, etc.
To the left of it, if you look at the main entrance, there are many private shops where you can choose different coins of the Pacific region, both in circulation and already issued, as well as paper notes. This is for numesmatics lovers.
One of the travel agencies took a day trip (from 8 am to 6 pm) to the Mekong Delta. There are also two and three days. They explained that we need a Russian-speaking guide. Three people got 185 bucks: a minibus Toyota Nadja for three, the guide Van (Vanya) used to work in Russia in Astrakhan as a builder, in some sentences he gets confused and slows down in Russian. In the future, he offered to take excursions directly from him, it's cheaper. The tour consists of visiting several villages on the Mekong: where fruits are grown, coconut sweets, wine and honey are made. While we were eating fruit in one village, a local family sang some national songs to us. The guide took us to a restaurant for lunch (included in the tour).
I wanted to eat a cobra (meat, blood, heart, gallbladder). This pleasure cost 70 bucks per kilogram. We were shown a snake about a kilogram in a net, we said OK, they took it away and brought it back with a bandaged muzzle. In our presence, her belly was opened and blood was squeezed out into a glass, and then her heart and bile were cut out live with scissors. The blood was mixed with vodka. Then this snake was taken away and brought back boiled and fried. The broth was great too.
As usual, he brought us to some souvenir shops with clothes and handicrafts. The goods are the same as in the city, but prices are 30-50% higher.
I recommend visiting the Cu Chi Tunnels tour. These are underground tunnels where the Vietnamese lived and hid during the war. There you can also shoot for a fee from real Soviet and American weapons. But it takes about 1.5 hours to get there. The cost of the tour for three: half a day without lunch - $ 125, a full day with lunch - $ 175.
By the way, on excursions where lunch is included, drinks are not included, at best a bottle of water. So beer or juices need to be paid separately. A can of beer or soda costs 20.000 VND, approximately $1.30.
On our street in a hotel located 50 meters from us, there was a body massage. There are a lot of them scattered around the city. Massage price - 8 - 10 dollars. The price includes: dry and steam sauna, cool and warm jacuzzi, foot bath with stones, massage with hands and feet (they walk on you).
At first glance, the traffic on the streets of Saigon is crazy, dozens and hundreds of motorbikes, cars, bicycles, bicycle carts, etc. And all this is moving somewhere, going. At those intersections where there are no traffic lights, all this moves simultaneously in all directions and somehow without incident, without accidents. Whoever honks stronger and more often means that he needs to drive harder, he is let through. It is also better to let those whose car is larger. That's all the rules. Sort of organized chaos.
At first it seems simply impossible for a pedestrian to cross the road, but this is only at first glance. You just need to start moving across the street and the stream of motorbikes calmly flows around you. The main thing is not to rush, but slowly. And it's better not just one, but several at once. Such a bunch of pedestrians is better seen on the road. Well, it’s better not to meddle under buses, they won’t see the driver.
Walking around the city late at night, we noticed that hefty rats calmly walk along the sidewalks, cockroaches 4 cm across the road, all this peacefully coexists with people.
On the same day, we went to some travel agency on our street and asked if we could buy tickets to Nha Trang, since we did not order a transfer to Nha Trang from a Russian tour operator, we decided to take it on the spot. We were told that there was a regular bus with berths to Nha Trang, it would take about 10 hours to drive 400 km. We refused and decided to fly by plane.
The binding time is about 1.5 hours, that suited us. The girl from the agency began to issue tickets, taking our passport data. We asked if we could get tickets from her back from Nha Trang to Saigon, and then from Saigon to Thailand to Bangkok and back from Bangkok to Vietnam to Saigon. She replied that there was no problem. We also wanted to fly through Cambodia with a stop there for 2 - 3 days, but changed our minds, it turned out a little expensive.
In general, we coordinated with the girl all the flights on the departure time, she dictated our passport data somewhere by phone and said that you would come in for tickets in the evening. We paid her for all the tickets (Saigon-Nha Trang, Nha Trang-Saigon, Saigon-Bangkok, Bangkok-Saigon) a little less than 400 dollars per person. Fine. She wrote us a receipt that she accepted the money and we went to the city to drink beer.
In the evening we came to the agency, that girl was not there, but the other girl replied that everything was OK and handed us tickets to Nha Trang and back. And after 10 minutes, some dude brought us international tickets to Bangkok and back on a motorcycle. Electronic tickets (e-ticket), our names, number and time of flight, airports of departure and destinations are simply indicated on a format sheet of paper. No seals, signatures, nothing.
And interestingly, these tickets are valid. And this is not in Europe, but in developing Asia. Bought from some small agency with no name, there are dozens of them in the city. Moreover, these tickets are valid not only for international, but also for domestic airlines. Imagine if I came to board a plane in some Nizhny Tagil to Khabarovsk and presented such a piece of paper, saying that I bought it somewhere in Vietnam. They would look at me like I'm an idiot. If only the whole world switched to e-tickets faster. It's so convenient!
On May 30, we ordered a taxi to the airport in the morning, at the reception they answered that it costs 100.000 dong. But he charged us 150.000 dong, which is about 9.4 dollars, or 220 rubles. Drive 15 - 20 minutes through the whole night city, so that's okay too. But the taxi driver brought us to the international terminal, since we are white tourists, and immediately left. And we needed a local. We had to drag 300 meters with our suitcases. It's good that the suitcases have wheels. So it’s better not to let the taxi go right away until you decide where you got to. By the way, there are taxis with meters on the streets all night, so you could not order at the reception, but just call the nearest one, these taxis have meters. And we were driven by some unmarked. It is possible that at the reception they just threw a coven on one of their relatives.
The local airport was closed, it does not work at night, it opens at 5 am for the first flights.
We had to sit for an hour on the open terrace of the airport, fortunately, there are a lot of benches on purpose. At night, though not hot, but stuffy. By 5 am airport workers came and opened the doors. Without knowledge of the Vietnamese language and almost English, we normally checked in and went to the landing. Everything is simple there: you show your e-tickets to any port worker, they show you with a finger the direction where to go. And that's it. Next is ingenuity.
Our flight to Nha Trang was canceled and we were asked to board at another terminal. There was a boarding flight to Da Nang. Apparently, two flights were combined, since a large Airbus A 320 was delivered to Da Nang. The plane was almost full, they just took off, they immediately carried wet wipes and drinks, and after 5 minutes they began to deliver lunch. At first I was surprised why there was such a rush, but it turned out that instead of the planned 1.5 hours, only 50 minutes were flying.
Nha Trang Airport is located about 70 km from the city - on the Cam Ranh Peninsula. There used to be a Soviet air base, as well as a naval base. And even earlier it all belonged to the Americans. At Cam Ranh airport we took a taxi and went to Nha Trang. There, near the terminal, there are maroon taxis (mostly minibuses), these are thieves' monopolists, and a little further aside - white with a green pattern (passenger sedans). We agreed on a price to the city - $ 15. On the way, he inquired where we came from, we answered that from Russia. At the entrance to Nha Trang, someone calls him, he answers, and then hands us the phone. We are told in Russian on the phone that the driver made a mistake with the price and we still need to pay an additional 7 dollars, otherwise he will not go further. We try to remind you that the price is negotiated before the hotel, but the carrier stops on the outskirts of the city and looks at us. Bitch!
I had to pay him more, it was useless to argue, we don’t understand each other, we don’t know where to go with our suitcases, there are no other taxis nearby. They apparently have a dispatcher in all sorts of languages, especially for such divorces. Where will the tourist go? You don’t want to beat the driver’s face, you don’t want to please the police at the beginning of your vacation.
So it is better to take a white-green taxi at the airport. We used their services in the city in the future, there are meters there, you can pay for them. But also, if you ask how much from us, then they will definitely say a much higher price. In general, you need to pay the meter without asking or round it up a little, like a tip.
We will encounter such an attitude towards tourists in Vietnam and beyond: to get more money from them, even insolently overpricing. You need to bargain hard, and then defend the price. For example, he took a cycle rickshaw to drive to the store without immediately specifying the price.
He took me 400 meters there and back to the hotel, asking for 150.000 dong (9.5 dollars). I went nuts and said that even by taxi such a distance would be only 40.000 dong, then he rolls his eyes and tries to rip off at least 100.000. As a result, we agree on 50.000 dong (3.2 dollars).
This is not the case in Thailand. There it is somehow softer, if the price is agreed, then it does not change upon arrival.
In general, we arrived from the airport to YASAKA HOTEL 4 * in the morning, at 9 o'clock, and the checkout time is 11-00. We waited in the lobby for 2 hours. The hotel was with breakfast, and on the first day they gave coupons for a light dinner. There were many such people waiting for resettlement, but except for us, everyone else was Japanese. In the hotel, in general, 70-80 percent were Japanese. One of the Japanese raised a scandal, yelled that he was tired of waiting for resettlement, yelled for about 10 minutes. They listened to him attentively, and then explained something. In short, he went to sit out until the estimated time.
Hotel YASAKA has a Russian TV channel RTV-Russia.
The room also has a standard package of options: two large beds, TV, bathtub, hairdryer, minibar, safe, telephone, pens, notebooks for writing, etc. In addition, fresh free fruits are brought into the room upon check-in (in our case, bananas) , and also on the shelf are wine, sweets, chips, coffee-tea bags, a kettle with dishes. Internet in the lobby for checking e-mail, but does not allow forums and chats. The hotel has a good spa salon, all sorts of cleanings, massages, mud baths, etc. There is a good swimming pool with sun loungers and towels on the territory. There is another swimming pool on the roof of the annex to the hotel. Towels are provided free of charge for hotel guests on the beach. It's enough just to say that you're from the Yasaka Hotel.
We immediately bought local phone sims from the Viettel operator. SIM cards of three operators are sold in all salons where cell phones are sold. The price of a SIM card is 180.000 dong, of which 120.000 dong (7.5 dollars or 178 rubles) is put on the balance.
There you can also purchase balance replenishment cards for 100.200 and 300 thousand dong. SMS from such a SIM card cost me from 4 to 11 rubles. depending on the volume of the message, the cost of the conversation somehow did not register. But the balance of 520 thousand dong (770 rubles) was enough for me for 7 days. Calling Russian cell numbers is very simple, only in the dialed number you need to change the first digit 8 to +7 and you're done.
If you stand facing the hotel, then on the right along the adjacent street Yersin st. There is just such a cell phone shop in one block. Internet cafe nearby. And if you walk 2 blocks up and turn right and go to the end of the street (also 2 blocks), then you will run into the DAM-Market shopping center, there are also many private shops near it, for collectors you can also choose different coins of the Pacific region, both in circulation and already released, as well as all kinds of shells from small to huge sizes, including the "Horn of Triton", well, and all sorts of local little things.
In the evening we met a man, he speaks good Russian, his name is Bin (or Boris). As it turned out, this is a hotel worker. He has been working in a hotel for the last few days, opens his own MI A LLC (travel agency and massage parlor), is going to work for some local tour operator. We took a trip from him to the island of monkeys and to the waterfalls. He combined these two excursions for us and cut the price. According to the price list of agencies, it cost $40-45 per person, and we paid $100 for three people for half a day. Including myself as a Russian-speaking guide and a minibus with a driver.
In the future, Boris suggested that if there is an interest in returning to Vietnam again, then do not contact Russian tour operators, but only take tickets to Vietnam and back, inform him in advance of your passport details and dates of arrival and departure. And he can arrange visas, hotel reservations, excursions, transfers.
All this is both in Nha Trang and in Saigon, Hanoi, any city in Vietnam, as well as in Cambodia and Thailand. And all this will be cheaper if you work directly. By the way, we will encounter his services in the future, he will really help us.
The monkeys living on the island are accustomed to tourists, they eat corn and nuts from their hands, they do not jump on their shoulders. The leader there puts them in order. And the waterfalls are just amazing. Especially rock climbing. But this is not for women, they will not all go there. It is especially difficult to go to the third waterfall. But it's worth it. Beautiful! We swam there, and then Boris took us to a local cafe for lunch. The entire lunch is $5 per person. Well, very tasty! ! So that we would not make a mistake with the choice, Boris himself ordered dishes for us. And I wasn't wrong. Moreover, he immediately understood what we want.
I mentioned that I wanted to see pearls, he immediately offered the services of his relative, who professionally deals with pearls.
Building number 78, Spanish restaurant La Mancha. The owner is a Spaniard, Enrique, who lived in Georgia and speaks excellent Russian. His Vietnamese wife Tuya also squirts a little. Cooking in the restaurant - just amazing! Prices are quite normal. While you are waiting for the execution of the order - wet wipes and mini-sandwiches to increase your appetite at the expense of the institution, and after dinner - fruit. They have three types of fresh draft beer: light, dark and red. Very tasty, cooked somewhere specially to order. Well, a rich menu in Russian, food is made for Europeans, but in the local flavor. The restaurant's specialty is lamb. Large selection of alcoholic drinks. This restaurant is often visited by Russians, both tourists and those living in Nha Trang. Enrique said that this year, on February 23, there were generally a lot of people there, former officers who served in Cam Ranh gathered, and simply those who served at all were written off in advance by e-mail.
And then one of my comrades endured when too hot a stone was placed on his lower back, as a result - a burn and a blister. Unpleasant.
In the southern part of the city, Biet Thu St. street runs perpendicular from the beach. On it, between the second and third streets from the embankment, there is a BAMBOU Company brand clothing store. They also have a shop and further south on the second street. These are good quality cotton products: T-shirts, shorts, sweatshirts, etc. The prices are quite reasonable, you can also pay with a plastic card.
In general, Na Trang is a small town. For tourists, everything is quite compact there. Everything is within the first three streets from the beach. Further - this is more for the locals.
There is a good overview of Nha Trang for those who are here for the first time. Worth to visit. There are island tours, a cruise on the Song Cai River, thermal springs, all sorts of remote beaches. It makes no sense to describe it for a long time, all this can be read on the Internet.
One of my comrades had a toothache.
So they rushed to rest with their families. Well, if Nha Trang is the main tour. the center of the country, that's where they go. This is like our Sochi-Anapa. But in principle, they did not interfere with us, there were enough places in the cafe for everyone. There are especially a lot of them on weekends, on weekdays - less. In May, in general, the beach and cafes were empty, in September it should be the same.
On the beach in a cafe you can order a fried frog. In other cafes, I did not see frogs on the menu. But apparently not the season, because the frog was somehow small.
The hotel has an ATM located at the entrance to the hotel. He ate a card from my friend. Just after entering the pin code suddenly decided to reboot. Rebooted and began to work further with other clients. And I just forgot about the swallowed card. Comrade in a panic, no cash, no cards! At the reception they said that it was already late, they called the bank, tomorrow at 8-00 the bank employees will be there.
The next day, from 8-00 am we sat in the lobby, waited for the bank employees, waited 2 hours and, having asked where this bank was located, we went there ourselves (only 3 blocks). Just in case, I suggested taking a copy of my passport with me. When we came to VietComBank and went into the office of the managers, one of them immediately jumped up to meet them, took out a card from the desk drawer and asked if it was ours? We showed him a copy of the friend's passport and the card was returned to us. No statements, signatures, bureaucracy. We checked the balance - everything is fine, the money was not stolen.
After seven days in Nha Trang, with the help of Boris (Bin), we left for Cam Ranh and flew to Saigon, and after about 5 hours from the international terminal - to Thailand to Bangkok. Thai Airways, large Boeing 777, about 1.5 hours flight, feeding, landing, etc. On the plane, everyone was given visa and immigration card forms to fill out.
In Bangkok, we turned to some security guard, whether it is necessary to issue a visa for Russian citizens, he showed us on his fingers that Russians do not need a visa, stomp to customs. Customs, baggage claim - a common ritual.
On the street we catch a taxi to Pattaya, it was already dark, the time is about 8-30 pm. They are trying to get us a taxi for 2500 baht, but we read on the internet that you can leave for only 1200-1300 baht. But with a discount for late time, we agree to 1500 baht to the hotel, which we will determine on the way. Upon arrival in Pattaya, we somehow explain to the driver that we need to go to the southern part of the city, first go along Sukhumvit Road, then turn onto Zuid Pattaya Road, then left onto Three Road and Phratamnak Road, the Cozy Beach and Mountain Beach hotel area. Taking into account the fact that I actively showed with my hands where to turn, he eventually understood.
In that area, I asked to drive up to a high-rise - a condominium. There was only one apartment available in the condo. Well then, to the nearest three-star hotel.
We stopped at the Island View Hotel 3 *, there are enough free places, they offered rooms for 1200 baht per day with a sea view and 1000 baht with a view of the city and the entrance to the hotel. I explained to my comrades that a sea view is just a view towards the sea, because there is a courtyard with a pool and a park behind the hotel, and a street behind it, and the sea is also below the rock, so it makes no sense to overpay, so we are going to live in the hotel for only three nights, and then we will look for some guesthouse. In short, we took two rooms for 1000 baht for 3 nights.
The hotel itself is small, a bit old, and because of the empty painted walls in the corridor it looks like Soviet hotels like Kolkhoznik. There were few tourists, and even those were practically only Russians. The rooms are basically all standard. We never got up for breakfast, so we couldn't rate it. There seems to be some kind of construction nearby, but there is no noise or dust from it. Wonders!
In this quiet area there are three more 3 * hotels: Cozy Beach, Mountain Beach, Pattaya Bay, 7/11 grocery and perfume store, souvenirs and jewelry, tailoring, a hairdresser, massage parlors. There are also several travel agencies, including a Russian-speaking one opposite the hotel, they used to work with the operator Natalie Tours, but now they are on their own. A little further along the main street of Soi Cozy Beach there is a laundry and an Internet salon. Several ATMs and currency exchange. In the store you can buy a Thai SIM card for a cell phone, and replenish the balance there.
There are also many different cafes, including the Leto cafe with Russian cuisine, where you can order dumplings, borsch, smoke a hookah. Many cafes have menus in Russian. In restaurants, I advise you to order only one dish, as the portions are large and satisfying. Prices are quite normal, you can eat well for 150-200 baht with beer or juice. There is a fruit stand at the crossroads. And a little further at the next crossroads - a kiosk for ordering a taxi to the airport.
The beach is located across a quiet street, down the stairs from the high bank. There are many free sunbeds and umbrellas on the beach, there are cafes to eat and buy a drink and drink. It’s better to go to the beach early in the summer if you want to swim, because by noon the water goes far away - low tide. Tuk-tuk taxis and bikes are always ready on the street. To get to the city center by tuk-tuk - 100 baht, by bike - 40-50 baht, depending on where you need to drop off. Well, in the center you can ride a regular tuk-tuk for 10 baht. From the hotel for 200 baht you can drive to the Lukdod gift shop in the north of the city or to the aquarium in the south. I recommend to go there, beautiful big fish, you walk through the tunnel, they swim around. In general, if you don’t want some special drive, then in the district of these hotels you can find everything, you can not go anywhere. If Pattaya is conditionally counted as a mini-Sochi, then the area of \u200b\u200bthese hotels is a mini-Adler. I repeat - conditionally!
Nearby is the Pattaya Park hotel, I will not describe it, a lot has been written about it. I can only say that there are also many Russians in it, especially from the Urals and Siberia. In the city during the day you can wander around shopping or for a massage. Only with a massage be more careful, if not comfortable, it is better to say right away, otherwise they will break it so that the whole vacation will be ruined. Everything comes to life in the evening, with the advent of the evening coolness.
After two nights, we decided to move from the hotel to some guesthouse. At the travel agency, the manager Alexander told us that at the crossroads opposite the Cozy Beach hotel there is a good guest house where his wife lived, who came to him from Russia. Look, we liked it. Price - 500 baht per day per room, 2 times cheaper than in our hotel. Basically, we moved.
The hostess is Madame Ida. Her name is pronounced as a cross between Ida and Food. Husband is a naval officer. She has a friend who runs a bar nearby and her husband is a policeman.
So peace and security in the guesthouse are guaranteed. Madame Ida has her own open restaurant a little further down the street, they cook deliciously, Russian tourists often eat. Ida does not speak Russian, only English. But somehow we understood each other. She and her husband live on the second floor (the first is a 7/11 store), and rents out the third and fourth. There are two rooms on these floors. The rooms are large, a bathroom with a shower, two single beds put together (can be rolled out), a dressing table, a table and chairs, a sofa, a large refrigerator, TV, wardrobe, adjustable air conditioning, a fan on the wall. In short, as a standard set in a normal hotel, even better than some. Behind a sliding glass wall is a large balcony overlooking the main street and neighboring hotels. Room cleaning - on request, costs 50-100 baht. They cleaned my room once, I didn’t ask for more, it doesn’t get dirty, because I practically only spent the night in it.
Valuables can be handed over to Ida in a safe for safekeeping, but I did not hand over anything, outsiders do not go there. Cool quiet place!
In the city itself, you can find guesthouses with rooms for 350-400 baht, but noisy, a lot of people and I don’t know about theft.
By the way, there are 2 Russian TV channels in Pattaya: RTR and the local "Welcome to Pattaya". This is an interesting channel, a lot of useful information about Pattaya, overview information and Russian films are played.
In the travel agency "Welcome to Pattaya" I bought a ticket for 2 days 1 night to Cambodia. The price is 10.000 baht + 500 baht for a private hotel room. If you don’t have a photo for a visa to Cambodia with you, then you pay 100 baht at the border and go! Departure from Pattaya by minibus at 6 am, we arrive at the border in about 4 hours, of which we lost an hour at the Consulate General of Cambodia on the way to the border - we stopped to apply for a visa.
It took a long time to cross the border, we lost about an hour more.
Moreover, they went through the Thai one normally, went into the neutral zone, but the Cambodian one took a long time: all the tourists at one window, there the officer types something on the computer with one finger, enters passport data. Brake. What struck me: local Cambodians go through customs without passports, they just walk past the customs post. Moreover, no one controls them. You can walk past the customs post or go to the customs office and go past the windows and go out into the street again. I looked around, there was no guard, looked out into the street, the exit was also not guarded. That is, you can just go outside and you are in Cambodia! Without customs check of the passport! Then you can probably go back as well. I really wanted to try it, but I didn't dare. After customs, another minivan was already waiting for us and we drove to Siem Reap.
In the neutral zone in the border town of Poipet, you can also stay as long as you like. There are also hotels and restaurants.
There are some casinos there, where both Thais and Cambodians come.
The contrast at the entrance to Cambodia is awesome! The roads are broken, dirty slush on the streets to the very entrances to the houses. In some town, which we passed halfway, it seems Sisophon, there are no paved roads, only unpaved ones. The guide said that there was an active construction of the road network, but we did not see it. Yes, the roads seem to be graded, yes, in some places they are covered with rubble, yes, in some places heaps of sand are poured, but the work is not being carried out, they are standing. As the guide said, the Khmers won the competition for the construction of roads, but they don’t know how to work and don’t want to. But by the fall, they seem to promise to hand over the object. Koreans walk around in circles, ready to take on construction and can do it quickly. I hope they succeed. Further closer to Siem Reap there are already good asphalt roads.
In general, we drove slowly and for a long time. We arrived in Siem Reap only at 15 o'clock, immediately to some restaurant for lunch. Seemed to be well fed
. There was one Russian tourist with us, according to him, he worked in Cambodia 15-20 years ago. So he zadolbal our guide. At first, he did not want to sit at a common table with his wife, it was crowded, you see. Then he was offended that a separate table for them was sparsely reserved and little fruit and fish were laid on them. Then he asked for some kind of khom sauce for the fish. He says that in Cambodia it is customary to serve fish with this particular sauce. Local waiters do not understand him, he freaks out at them and raises his voice, they stand in a stupor. The guide also cannot understand what kind of “khom” this is, although he has been working in Cambodia for a long time. This tourist says that no one understands anything, he is the only one who knows the real Cambodian cuisine. As a result, no matter what they brought him from sauces, everything was not right! Then he began to teach the guide that the local currency should be correctly called not rials, but riels. And allegedly only those who do not respect the country call money rials.
Although strange, I myself have heard Cambodians call their money rials, although it is really spelled riel. Apparently, the peculiarities of pronunciation, such as "Euro-Euro-Oiro" in Europe. Well, to hell with him!
Even one tourist was, he is on my photos in the internet, in a green shirt. So he drank all the way and got drunk. It seems to me that he did not understand anything from what he saw.
The Vietnamese connection was normal to the border and in Poipet, then disappeared. In Siem Reap, neither the Vietnamese Viettel SIM card, nor the Russian Utel and Megafon took it.
We were placed in the City River Hotel 3 *. The hotel is good, but in one wing, where the flight of stairs from the 1st to the 2nd floor, is being renovated, so from the bottom to the upper floors - only by elevator. There is a nice swimming pool on the roof of the hotel. The rooms are standard, the whole set of options as in other hotels, there are with a wide bed, there are with two separate ones. For guests - free internet on the 1st floor.
The whole of Siem Reap is just a few blocks of houses and hotels in 2 - 4 floors, well, the adjacent outskirts. The entire center can be explored on foot in 20-30 minutes. There is a street at night, like Walking Street in Pattaya, called Pub Street, but only 100 meters long, and then it’s not interesting. Here in Siem Reap all the nightlife, or rather the evening, as at night everything starts to close by midnight.
First day
I'm not writing for someone to get some new information, but rather just to publish an essay about the rest. If friends will pester how I had a rest, I will simply point to a link on the Internet where you can read everything and see some photos.
The trip began with the fact that a friend who works with me in the same organization asked if you would like to go on vacation in June to Vietnam? And that he and his friend want to go there. I replied that I was ready to go to Vietnam even tomorrow. No, the day after tomorrow, because you still need to have time to apply for a vacation and sign the order of the head. But he made a counter offer that if we fly to Southeast Asia, where we fly for more than 8 hours and pay 1000 bucks for air tickets, then we need to relax there longer, for example, not the standard 14 days in one city, but visit two countries for 10 days.
So we decided: 10 days in Vietnam and 10 days in Thailand.
Vietnam Airlines flew from Moscow from Vnukovo on May 26 on a Moscow-Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) flight. Round-trip tickets cost about 23.500 rubles. In the package with the tour operator "Foundation of Peace" (E-Burg), in addition to tickets, they also paid for hotel rooms in Vietnam for 10 days. Hotel in Saigon ELIOS HOTEL - 60 USD/day per room for one, and in Nha Trang YASAKA SAYGON HOTEL - 80 USD/day per room for one. These were standard double rooms provided to one tourist. My comrades lived in a double room together, so their accommodation cost them almost half as much for each. The first transfer from Saigon airport to the hotel was also immediately booked.
The Vietnam Airlines flight was not a charter one, but a regular one, so there were only a few tourists there. Mostly Vietnamese, apparently living and working in Russia. Beautiful flight attendants, delicious food, a couple of bottles of cognac from duty free - the flight went well.
By the way, Vietnamese airlines serve alcohol once, but you can ask for more. This is for lovers.
We had to get a visa at the airport upon arrival. On the plane, we were given immigration cards to fill out. And the visa application forms were given to us at the visa department at the Saigon airport. By the way, I printed out such a form from the Internet in advance, there are dubbed in Russian, who have problems with Vietnamese or English. Otherwise, at the port you will have to queue 2 times: first for the form and then to hand it over. Those who received a visa in Russia immediately went to passport control. The visa processing time at the airport is about 40 minutes. I invested 20 bucks in my passport and the three of us got visas in just 3-5 minutes. You can invest 5 bucks in your passport, this will speed up the process. Having received a visa - through customs and into the city.
At the Saigon airport, we were met by a local man with a piece of paper on which the name of one of us was written in English. He put us in a minivan and we drove into the city to the hotel.
ELIOS HOTEL 3* is located on the busy Pham Ngu Lao Str. in the southern part of Saigon, district 1 (District 1). The hotel has a Russian TV channel RTV, which seems to be delayed by 6 hours. The room has a standard package of options: a wide bed, TV, safe, minibar, hairdryer, bath, etc. In the lobby for guests there is free unlimited internet.
Nearby on the streets there are many other hotels, houses with Room for rent, travel agencies, shops, a shopping center. Also to the right, there is a good barchik, decorated in a cowboy style, with live music a la USA. Right across the park is Notre Dame Cathedral.
Two blocks south of our hotel there is a shopping center, all kinds of rags, electronics, various suitcases, bags, coffee and tea, flowers, etc.
To the left of it, if you look at the main entrance, there are many private shops where you can choose different coins of the Pacific region, both in circulation and already issued, as well as paper notes. This is for numesmatics lovers.
One of the travel agencies took a day trip (from 8 am to 6 pm) to the Mekong Delta. There are also two and three days. They explained that we need a Russian-speaking guide. Three people got 185 bucks: a minibus Toyota Nadja for three, the guide Van (Vanya) used to work in Russia in Astrakhan as a builder, in some sentences he gets confused and slows down in Russian. In the future, he offered to take excursions directly from him, it's cheaper. The tour consists of visiting several villages on the Mekong: where fruits are grown, coconut sweets, wine and honey are made. While we were eating fruit in one village, a local family sang some national songs to us. The guide took us to a restaurant for lunch (included in the tour).
I wanted to eat a cobra (meat, blood, heart, gallbladder). This pleasure cost 70 bucks per kilogram. We were shown a snake about a kilogram in a net, we said OK, they took it away and brought it back with a bandaged muzzle. In our presence, her belly was opened and blood was squeezed out into a glass, and then her heart and bile were cut out live with scissors. The blood was mixed with vodka. Then this snake was taken away and brought back boiled and fried. The broth was great too.
As usual, he brought us to some souvenir shops with clothes and handicrafts. The goods are the same as in the city, but prices are 30-50% higher.
I recommend visiting the Cu Chi Tunnels tour. These are underground tunnels where the Vietnamese lived and hid during the war. There you can also shoot for a fee from real Soviet and American weapons. But it takes about 1.5 hours to get there. The cost of the tour for three: half a day without lunch - $ 125, a full day with lunch - $ 175.
By the way, on excursions where lunch is included, drinks are not included, at best a bottle of water. So beer or juices need to be paid separately. A can of beer or soda costs 20.000 VND, approximately $1.30.
On our street in a hotel located 50 meters from us, there was a body massage. There are a lot of them scattered around the city. Massage price - 8 - 10 dollars. The price includes: dry and steam sauna, cool and warm jacuzzi, foot bath with stones, massage with hands and feet (they walk on you).
At first glance, the traffic on the streets of Saigon is crazy, dozens and hundreds of motorbikes, cars, bicycles, bicycle carts, etc. And all this is moving somewhere, going. At those intersections where there are no traffic lights, all this moves simultaneously in all directions and somehow without incident, without accidents. Whoever honks stronger and more often means that he needs to drive harder, he is let through. It is also better to let those whose car is larger. That's all the rules. Sort of organized chaos.
At first it seems simply impossible for a pedestrian to cross the road, but this is only at first glance. You just need to start moving across the street and the stream of motorbikes calmly flows around you. The main thing is not to rush, but slowly. And it's better not just one, but several at once. Such a bunch of pedestrians is better seen on the road. Well, it’s better not to meddle under buses, they won’t see the driver.
Walking around the city late at night, we noticed that hefty rats calmly walk along the sidewalks, cockroaches 4 cm across the road, all this peacefully coexists with people.
On the same day, we went to some travel agency on our street and asked if we could buy tickets to Nha Trang, since we did not order a transfer to Nha Trang from a Russian tour operator, we decided to take it on the spot. We were told that there was a regular bus with berths to Nha Trang, it would take about 10 hours to drive 400 km. We refused and decided to fly by plane.
The binding time is about 1.5 hours, that suited us. The girl from the agency began to issue tickets, taking our passport data. We asked if we could get tickets from her back from Nha Trang to Saigon, and then from Saigon to Thailand to Bangkok and back from Bangkok to Vietnam to Saigon. She replied that there was no problem. We also wanted to fly through Cambodia with a stop there for 2 - 3 days, but changed our minds, it turned out a little expensive.
In general, we coordinated with the girl all the flights on the departure time, she dictated our passport data somewhere by phone and said that you would come in for tickets in the evening. We paid her for all the tickets (Saigon-Nha Trang, Nha Trang-Saigon, Saigon-Bangkok, Bangkok-Saigon) a little less than 400 dollars per person. Fine. She wrote us a receipt that she accepted the money and we went to the city to drink beer.
In the evening we came to the agency, that girl was not there, but the other girl replied that everything was OK and handed us tickets to Nha Trang and back. And after 10 minutes, some dude brought us international tickets to Bangkok and back on a motorcycle. Electronic tickets (e-ticket), our names, number and time of flight, airports of departure and destinations are simply indicated on a format sheet of paper. No seals, signatures, nothing.
And interestingly, these tickets are valid. And this is not in Europe, but in developing Asia. Bought from some small agency with no name, there are dozens of them in the city. Moreover, these tickets are valid not only for international, but also for domestic airlines. Imagine if I came to board a plane in some Nizhny Tagil to Khabarovsk and presented such a piece of paper, saying that I bought it somewhere in Vietnam. They would look at me like I'm an idiot. If only the whole world switched to e-tickets faster. It's so convenient!
On May 30, we ordered a taxi to the airport in the morning, at the reception they answered that it costs 100.000 dong. But he charged us 150.000 dong, which is about 9.4 dollars, or 220 rubles. Drive 15 - 20 minutes through the whole night city, so that's okay too. But the taxi driver brought us to the international terminal, since we are white tourists, and immediately left. And we needed a local. We had to drag 300 meters with our suitcases. It's good that the suitcases have wheels. So it’s better not to let the taxi go right away until you decide where you got to. By the way, there are taxis with meters on the streets all night, so you could not order at the reception, but just call the nearest one, these taxis have meters. And we were driven by some unmarked. It is possible that at the reception they just threw a coven on one of their relatives.
The local airport was closed, it does not work at night, it opens at 5 am for the first flights.
We had to sit for an hour on the open terrace of the airport, fortunately, there are a lot of benches on purpose. At night, though not hot, but stuffy. By 5 am airport workers came and opened the doors. Without knowledge of the Vietnamese language and almost English, we normally checked in and went to the landing. Everything is simple there: you show your e-tickets to any port worker, they show you with a finger the direction where to go. And that's it. Next is ingenuity.
Our flight to Nha Trang was canceled and we were asked to board at another terminal. There was a boarding flight to Da Nang. Apparently, two flights were combined, since a large Airbus A 320 was delivered to Da Nang. The plane was almost full, they just took off, they immediately carried wet wipes and drinks, and after 5 minutes they began to deliver lunch. At first I was surprised why there was such a rush, but it turned out that instead of the planned 1.5 hours, only 50 minutes were flying.
Nha Trang Airport is located about 70 km from the city - on the Cam Ranh Peninsula. There used to be a Soviet air base, as well as a naval base. And even earlier it all belonged to the Americans. At Cam Ranh airport we took a taxi and went to Nha Trang. There, near the terminal, there are maroon taxis (mostly minibuses), these are thieves' monopolists, and a little further aside - white with a green pattern (passenger sedans). We agreed on a price to the city - $ 15. On the way, he inquired where we came from, we answered that from Russia. At the entrance to Nha Trang, someone calls him, he answers, and then hands us the phone. We are told in Russian on the phone that the driver made a mistake with the price and we still need to pay an additional 7 dollars, otherwise he will not go further. We try to remind you that the price is negotiated before the hotel, but the carrier stops on the outskirts of the city and looks at us. Bitch!
I had to pay him more, it was useless to argue, we don’t understand each other, we don’t know where to go with our suitcases, there are no other taxis nearby. They apparently have a dispatcher in all sorts of languages, especially for such divorces. Where will the tourist go? You don’t want to beat the driver’s face, you don’t want to please the police at the beginning of your vacation.
So it is better to take a white-green taxi at the airport. We used their services in the city in the future, there are meters there, you can pay for them. But also, if you ask how much from us, then they will definitely say a much higher price. In general, you need to pay the meter without asking or round it up a little, like a tip.
We will encounter such an attitude towards tourists in Vietnam and beyond: to get more money from them, even insolently overpricing. You need to bargain hard, and then defend the price. For example, he took a cycle rickshaw to drive to the store without immediately specifying the price.
He took me 400 meters there and back to the hotel, asking for 150.000 dong (9.5 dollars). I went nuts and said that even by taxi such a distance would be only 40.000 dong, then he rolls his eyes and tries to rip off at least 100.000. As a result, we agree on 50.000 dong (3.2 dollars).
This is not the case in Thailand. There it is somehow softer, if the price is agreed, then it does not change upon arrival.
In general, we arrived from the airport to YASAKA HOTEL 4 * in the morning, at 9 o'clock, and the checkout time is 11-00. We waited in the lobby for 2 hours. The hotel was with breakfast, and on the first day they gave coupons for a light dinner. There were many such people waiting for resettlement, but except for us, everyone else was Japanese. In the hotel, in general, 70-80 percent were Japanese. One of the Japanese raised a scandal, yelled that he was tired of waiting for resettlement, yelled for about 10 minutes. They listened to him attentively, and then explained something. In short, he went to sit out until the estimated time.
Hotel YASAKA has a Russian TV channel RTV-Russia.
The room also has a standard package of options: two large beds, TV, bathtub, hairdryer, minibar, safe, telephone, pens, notebooks for writing, etc. In addition, fresh free fruits are brought into the room upon check-in (in our case, bananas) , and also on the shelf are wine, sweets, chips, coffee-tea bags, a kettle with dishes. Internet in the lobby for checking e-mail, but does not allow forums and chats. The hotel has a good spa salon, all sorts of cleanings, massages, mud baths, etc. There is a good swimming pool with sun loungers and towels on the territory. There is another swimming pool on the roof of the annex to the hotel. Towels are provided free of charge for hotel guests on the beach. It's enough just to say that you're from the Yasaka Hotel.
We immediately bought local phone sims from the Viettel operator. SIM cards of three operators are sold in all salons where cell phones are sold. The price of a SIM card is 180.000 dong, of which 120.000 dong (7.5 dollars or 178 rubles) is put on the balance.
There you can also purchase balance replenishment cards for 100.200 and 300 thousand dong. SMS from such a SIM card cost me from 4 to 11 rubles. depending on the volume of the message, the cost of the conversation somehow did not register. But the balance of 520 thousand dong (770 rubles) was enough for me for 7 days. Calling Russian cell numbers is very simple, only in the dialed number you need to change the first digit 8 to +7 and you're done.
If you stand facing the hotel, then on the right along the adjacent street Yersin st. There is just such a cell phone shop in one block. Internet cafe nearby. And if you walk 2 blocks up and turn right and go to the end of the street (also 2 blocks), then you will run into the DAM-Market shopping center, there are also many private shops near it, for collectors you can also choose different coins of the Pacific region, both in circulation and already released, as well as all kinds of shells from small to huge sizes, including the "Horn of Triton", well, and all sorts of local little things.
In the evening we met a man, he speaks good Russian, his name is Bin (or Boris). As it turned out, this is a hotel worker. He has been working in a hotel for the last few days, opens his own MI A LLC (travel agency and massage parlor), is going to work for some local tour operator. We took a trip from him to the island of monkeys and to the waterfalls. He combined these two excursions for us and cut the price. According to the price list of agencies, it cost $40-45 per person, and we paid $100 for three people for half a day. Including myself as a Russian-speaking guide and a minibus with a driver.
In the future, Boris suggested that if there is an interest in returning to Vietnam again, then do not contact Russian tour operators, but only take tickets to Vietnam and back, inform him in advance of your passport details and dates of arrival and departure. And he can arrange visas, hotel reservations, excursions, transfers.
All this is both in Nha Trang and in Saigon, Hanoi, any city in Vietnam, as well as in Cambodia and Thailand. And all this will be cheaper if you work directly. By the way, we will encounter his services in the future, he will really help us.
The monkeys living on the island are accustomed to tourists, they eat corn and nuts from their hands, they do not jump on their shoulders. The leader there puts them in order. And the waterfalls are just amazing. Especially rock climbing. But this is not for women, they will not all go there. It is especially difficult to go to the third waterfall. But it's worth it. Beautiful! We swam there, and then Boris took us to a local cafe for lunch. The entire lunch is $5 per person. Well, very tasty! ! So that we would not make a mistake with the choice, Boris himself ordered dishes for us. And I wasn't wrong. Moreover, he immediately understood what we want.
I mentioned that I wanted to see pearls, he immediately offered the services of his relative, who professionally deals with pearls.
Building number 78, Spanish restaurant La Mancha. The owner is a Spaniard, Enrique, who lived in Georgia and speaks excellent Russian. His Vietnamese wife Tuya also squirts a little. Cooking in the restaurant - just amazing! Prices are quite normal. While you are waiting for the execution of the order - wet wipes and mini-sandwiches to increase your appetite at the expense of the institution, and after dinner - fruit. They have three types of fresh draft beer: light, dark and red. Very tasty, cooked somewhere specially to order. Well, a rich menu in Russian, food is made for Europeans, but in the local flavor. The restaurant's specialty is lamb. Large selection of alcoholic drinks. This restaurant is often visited by Russians, both tourists and those living in Nha Trang. Enrique said that this year, on February 23, there were generally a lot of people there, former officers who served in Cam Ranh gathered, and simply those who served at all were written off in advance by e-mail.
And then one of my comrades endured when too hot a stone was placed on his lower back, as a result - a burn and a blister. Unpleasant.
In the southern part of the city, Biet Thu St. street runs perpendicular from the beach. On it, between the second and third streets from the embankment, there is a BAMBOU Company brand clothing store. They also have a shop and further south on the second street. These are good quality cotton products: T-shirts, shorts, sweatshirts, etc. The prices are quite reasonable, you can also pay with a plastic card.
In general, Na Trang is a small town. For tourists, everything is quite compact there. Everything is within the first three streets from the beach. Further - this is more for the locals.
There is a good overview of Nha Trang for those who are here for the first time. Worth to visit. There are island tours, a cruise on the Song Cai River, thermal springs, all sorts of remote beaches. It makes no sense to describe it for a long time, all this can be read on the Internet.
One of my comrades had a toothache.
So they rushed to rest with their families. Well, if Nha Trang is the main tour. the center of the country, that's where they go. This is like our Sochi-Anapa. But in principle, they did not interfere with us, there were enough places in the cafe for everyone. There are especially a lot of them on weekends, on weekdays - less. In May, in general, the beach and cafes were empty, in September it should be the same.
On the beach in a cafe you can order a fried frog. In other cafes, I did not see frogs on the menu. But apparently not the season, because the frog was somehow small.
The hotel has an ATM located at the entrance to the hotel. He ate a card from my friend. Just after entering the pin code suddenly decided to reboot. Rebooted and began to work further with other clients. And I just forgot about the swallowed card. Comrade in a panic, no cash, no cards! At the reception they said that it was already late, they called the bank, tomorrow at 8-00 the bank employees will be there.
The next day, from 8-00 am we sat in the lobby, waited for the bank employees, waited 2 hours and, having asked where this bank was located, we went there ourselves (only 3 blocks). Just in case, I suggested taking a copy of my passport with me. When we came to VietComBank and went into the office of the managers, one of them immediately jumped up to meet them, took out a card from the desk drawer and asked if it was ours? We showed him a copy of the friend's passport and the card was returned to us. No statements, signatures, bureaucracy. We checked the balance - everything is fine, the money was not stolen.
After seven days in Nha Trang, with the help of Boris (Bin), we left for Cam Ranh and flew to Saigon, and after about 5 hours from the international terminal - to Thailand to Bangkok. Thai Airways, large Boeing 777, about 1.5 hours flight, feeding, landing, etc. On the plane, everyone was given visa and immigration card forms to fill out.
In Bangkok, we turned to some security guard, whether it is necessary to issue a visa for Russian citizens, he showed us on his fingers that Russians do not need a visa, stomp to customs. Customs, baggage claim - a common ritual.
On the street we catch a taxi to Pattaya, it was already dark, the time is about 8-30 pm. They are trying to get us a taxi for 2500 baht, but we read on the internet that you can leave for only 1200-1300 baht. But with a discount for late time, we agree to 1500 baht to the hotel, which we will determine on the way. Upon arrival in Pattaya, we somehow explain to the driver that we need to go to the southern part of the city, first go along Sukhumvit Road, then turn onto Zuid Pattaya Road, then left onto Three Road and Phratamnak Road, the Cozy Beach and Mountain Beach hotel area. Taking into account the fact that I actively showed with my hands where to turn, he eventually understood.
In that area, I asked to drive up to a high-rise - a condominium. There was only one apartment available in the condo. Well then, to the nearest three-star hotel.
We stopped at the Island View Hotel 3 *, there are enough free places, they offered rooms for 1200 baht per day with a sea view and 1000 baht with a view of the city and the entrance to the hotel. I explained to my comrades that a sea view is just a view towards the sea, because there is a courtyard with a pool and a park behind the hotel, and a street behind it, and the sea is also below the rock, so it makes no sense to overpay, so we are going to live in the hotel for only three nights, and then we will look for some guesthouse. In short, we took two rooms for 1000 baht for 3 nights.
The hotel itself is small, a bit old, and because of the empty painted walls in the corridor it looks like Soviet hotels like Kolkhoznik. There were few tourists, and even those were practically only Russians. The rooms are basically all standard. We never got up for breakfast, so we couldn't rate it. There seems to be some kind of construction nearby, but there is no noise or dust from it. Wonders!
In this quiet area there are three more 3 * hotels: Cozy Beach, Mountain Beach, Pattaya Bay, 7/11 grocery and perfume store, souvenirs and jewelry, tailoring, a hairdresser, massage parlors. There are also several travel agencies, including a Russian-speaking one opposite the hotel, they used to work with the operator Natalie Tours, but now they are on their own. A little further along the main street of Soi Cozy Beach there is a laundry and an Internet salon. Several ATMs and currency exchange. In the store you can buy a Thai SIM card for a cell phone, and replenish the balance there.
There are also many different cafes, including the Leto cafe with Russian cuisine, where you can order dumplings, borsch, smoke a hookah. Many cafes have menus in Russian. In restaurants, I advise you to order only one dish, as the portions are large and satisfying. Prices are quite normal, you can eat well for 150-200 baht with beer or juice. There is a fruit stand at the crossroads. And a little further at the next crossroads - a kiosk for ordering a taxi to the airport.
The beach is located across a quiet street, down the stairs from the high bank. There are many free sunbeds and umbrellas on the beach, there are cafes to eat and buy a drink and drink. It’s better to go to the beach early in the summer if you want to swim, because by noon the water goes far away - low tide. Tuk-tuk taxis and bikes are always ready on the street. To get to the city center by tuk-tuk - 100 baht, by bike - 40-50 baht, depending on where you need to drop off. Well, in the center you can ride a regular tuk-tuk for 10 baht. From the hotel for 200 baht you can drive to the Lukdod gift shop in the north of the city or to the aquarium in the south. I recommend to go there, beautiful big fish, you walk through the tunnel, they swim around. In general, if you don’t want some special drive, then in the district of these hotels you can find everything, you can not go anywhere. If Pattaya is conditionally counted as a mini-Sochi, then the area of \u200b\u200bthese hotels is a mini-Adler. I repeat - conditionally!
Nearby is the Pattaya Park hotel, I will not describe it, a lot has been written about it. I can only say that there are also many Russians in it, especially from the Urals and Siberia. In the city during the day you can wander around shopping or for a massage. Only with a massage be more careful, if not comfortable, it is better to say right away, otherwise they will break it so that the whole vacation will be ruined. Everything comes to life in the evening, with the advent of the evening coolness.
After two nights, we decided to move from the hotel to some guesthouse. At the travel agency, the manager Alexander told us that at the crossroads opposite the Cozy Beach hotel there is a good guest house where his wife lived, who came to him from Russia. Look, we liked it. Price - 500 baht per day per room, 2 times cheaper than in our hotel. Basically, we moved.
The hostess is Madame Ida. Her name is pronounced as a cross between Ida and Food. Husband is a naval officer. She has a friend who runs a bar nearby and her husband is a policeman.
So peace and security in the guesthouse are guaranteed. Madame Ida has her own open restaurant a little further down the street, they cook deliciously, Russian tourists often eat. Ida does not speak Russian, only English. But somehow we understood each other. She and her husband live on the second floor (the first is a 7/11 store), and rents out the third and fourth. There are two rooms on these floors. The rooms are large, a bathroom with a shower, two single beds put together (can be rolled out), a dressing table, a table and chairs, a sofa, a large refrigerator, TV, wardrobe, adjustable air conditioning, a fan on the wall. In short, as a standard set in a normal hotel, even better than some. Behind a sliding glass wall is a large balcony overlooking the main street and neighboring hotels. Room cleaning - on request, costs 50-100 baht. They cleaned my room once, I didn’t ask for more, it doesn’t get dirty, because I practically only spent the night in it.
Valuables can be handed over to Ida in a safe for safekeeping, but I did not hand over anything, outsiders do not go there. Cool quiet place!
In the city itself, you can find guesthouses with rooms for 350-400 baht, but noisy, a lot of people and I don’t know about theft.
By the way, there are 2 Russian TV channels in Pattaya: RTR and the local "Welcome to Pattaya". This is an interesting channel, a lot of useful information about Pattaya, overview information and Russian films are played.
In the travel agency "Welcome to Pattaya" I bought a ticket for 2 days 1 night to Cambodia. The price is 10.000 baht + 500 baht for a private hotel room. If you don’t have a photo for a visa to Cambodia with you, then you pay 100 baht at the border and go! Departure from Pattaya by minibus at 6 am, we arrive at the border in about 4 hours, of which we lost an hour at the Consulate General of Cambodia on the way to the border - we stopped to apply for a visa.
It took a long time to cross the border, we lost about an hour more.
Moreover, they went through the Thai one normally, went into the neutral zone, but the Cambodian one took a long time: all the tourists at one window, there the officer types something on the computer with one finger, enters passport data. Brake. What struck me: local Cambodians go through customs without passports, they just walk past the customs post. Moreover, no one controls them. You can walk past the customs post or go to the customs office and go past the windows and go out into the street again. I looked around, there was no guard, looked out into the street, the exit was also not guarded. That is, you can just go outside and you are in Cambodia! Without customs check of the passport! Then you can probably go back as well. I really wanted to try it, but I didn't dare. After customs, another minivan was already waiting for us and we drove to Siem Reap.
In the neutral zone in the border town of Poipet, you can also stay as long as you like. There are also hotels and restaurants.
There are some casinos there, where both Thais and Cambodians come.
The contrast at the entrance to Cambodia is awesome! The roads are broken, dirty slush on the streets to the very entrances to the houses. In some town, which we passed halfway, it seems Sisophon, there are no paved roads, only unpaved ones. The guide said that there was an active construction of the road network, but we did not see it. Yes, the roads seem to be graded, yes, in some places they are covered with rubble, yes, in some places heaps of sand are poured, but the work is not being carried out, they are standing. As the guide said, the Khmers won the competition for the construction of roads, but they don’t know how to work and don’t want to. But by the fall, they seem to promise to hand over the object. Koreans walk around in circles, ready to take on construction and can do it quickly. I hope they succeed. Further closer to Siem Reap there are already good asphalt roads.
In general, we drove slowly and for a long time. We arrived in Siem Reap only at 15 o'clock, immediately to some restaurant for lunch. Seemed to be well fed
. There was one Russian tourist with us, according to him, he worked in Cambodia 15-20 years ago. So he zadolbal our guide. At first, he did not want to sit at a common table with his wife, it was crowded, you see. Then he was offended that a separate table for them was sparsely reserved and little fruit and fish were laid on them. Then he asked for some kind of khom sauce for the fish. He says that in Cambodia it is customary to serve fish with this particular sauce. Local waiters do not understand him, he freaks out at them and raises his voice, they stand in a stupor. The guide also cannot understand what kind of “khom” this is, although he has been working in Cambodia for a long time. This tourist says that no one understands anything, he is the only one who knows the real Cambodian cuisine. As a result, no matter what they brought him from sauces, everything was not right! Then he began to teach the guide that the local currency should be correctly called not rials, but riels. And allegedly only those who do not respect the country call money rials.
Although strange, I myself have heard Cambodians call their money rials, although it is really spelled riel. Apparently, the peculiarities of pronunciation, such as "Euro-Euro-Oiro" in Europe. Well, to hell with him!
Even one tourist was, he is on my photos in the internet, in a green shirt. So he drank all the way and got drunk. It seems to me that he did not understand anything from what he saw.
The Vietnamese connection was normal to the border and in Poipet, then disappeared. In Siem Reap, neither the Vietnamese Viettel SIM card, nor the Russian Utel and Megafon took it.
We were placed in the City River Hotel 3 *. The hotel is good, but in one wing, where the flight of stairs from the 1st to the 2nd floor, is being renovated, so from the bottom to the upper floors - only by elevator. There is a nice swimming pool on the roof of the hotel. The rooms are standard, the whole set of options as in other hotels, there are with a wide bed, there are with two separate ones. For guests - free internet on the 1st floor.
The whole of Siem Reap is just a few blocks of houses and hotels in 2 - 4 floors, well, the adjacent outskirts. The entire center can be explored on foot in 20-30 minutes. There is a street at night, like Walking Street in Pattaya, called Pub Street, but only 100 meters long, and then it’s not interesting. Here in Siem Reap all the nightlife, or rather the evening, as at night everything starts to close by midnight.
First day
Translated automatically from Russian. View original
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OTHER REVIEWS ABOUT THE HOTEL
- Rest was a success
- great hotel but no balconies
- Good hotel
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