nothings gonna change my world

Ok, so Paul McCartney is a cool guy and everything, but "nothing's gonna change my world"??? Dang I wish life were really like that.
So about a month ago I had to go to Vietnam to get my visa renewed. The visa I came on is only renewable twice and I was past that, so I had to leave the country. Now I have a multiple-entry NGO visa, which is free. Whoot!
I went with Kati's dad because he needed to get a Visa too. That could have potentially been the most awkward thing ever, but it wasn't. So we got the cooler and filled it up with water and food and set off with one way tickets to the boarder. The bus company wouldn't sell us tickets for the way back, but more on that later. It was about 3 hours to the boarder (it used to be 4 but they've vastly improved the roads), we started at about 9 and got there at about noon, with only the minor snag that our bus didn't seem to want to get on the ferry. So we got to the boarder and the bus stopped at a little restaurant. Well Mr. Mark and I decided we'd better go ahead and get the visa stuff taken care of and eat later. We had both overstayed our visa's, Mark on accident, me because we didn't have the letter I needed for the NGO visa yet. So I ended up paying an extra $30 for overstaying my visa. Mr. Mark was supposed to have to pay...well a lot more. So we got to the window and each handled our passports. Mr. Mark had put money practically everywhere on his person, so while he had enough to pay, it didn't look like it when he opened his wallet. So he held out "all the money he had" to the guy and got away with it. (We would feel pretty bad about this, except that the money goes into the pockets of the passport control officers, and they mark you down as leaving on time. So we got our paperwork done on the Cambodian side and went to the Vietnamese side, where upon arrival, a guy grabbed each of us and took us to a table to fill out our entry/exit cards. They asked for our passports and a dollar each. I asked them what the dollar was for and my guy rolled his eyes at me, shoved the paper in my face and pointed me towards the line. I politely asked to borrow his pen and he gave me a death glare. I borrowed one from a lovely British tourist. Basically he was asking me to pay him a dollar to fill out my information and hand it to the processor, which I am perfectly capable of doing myself thank you very much. After that things went smoothly until we got back to the restaurant on the Cambodian side and found that our bus had gone to Ho Chi Minh city. Apparently they let them do that now. So Mr. Mark called their translator and had him talk to the restaurant owner and figure out what was going, as this was a conversation out of both of our ranges of total comprehension. We figured out that there were other taxis and buses that would take us back to Phnom Penh. We ended up meeting a guy who had been on our bus and was in the same predicament we were. He said he had found a guy who was willing to take us back for $5 each, which is an amazing deal. We started walking to the bus and a bunch of taxi drivers kept trying to get us to go with them, except they wanted $50 for one car to take all three of us, and they were mad that we wanted to go on the bus. I told them that if they would take all three of us for $15, $5 a head, we would be happy to get go with them. The taxi drivers said no. So they kept standing there and arguing and arguing and we finally just pushed past them and got on the bus. The bus, by the way, was completely empty, as it had just dropped a bunch of Vietnamese people at the boarder, so we had it all to ourselves. So in a couple of minutes our driver comes up and tells us that the taxi drivers are very mad at him and that they said that if he takes us the next time he comes back they will slash his tires. He asked us to get off the bus and start walking down the road and said that he would come pick us up, which he did and off we went. At the ferry crossing, which we were stopped at for over an hour, I realized that we hadn't ever gotten around to eating lunch. I also realized that about the only thing that they sell to eat at the ferry crossing, are crickets, various sea creatures with their eyeballs still attached, and sandwiches made out of very questionable meat. I decided to pass on all of the above. During our hour long wait, we picked up an entire bus load of people. Since we had the bus to ourselves at the beginning, I had a seat empty next to me, and ended up with a 21 year old guy who said he was a student in the university at Phnom Penh. He wants to be a doctor and make lots of money. After we exhausted the extend of his English and my Khmer, I got out my ipod and offered to share. I decided that if he was going to listen to western music I should at least give him a proper education, so I put on U2. He politely listened to one song then handed me the ear bud back and said (Jeremy, don't read this next part), "Thank you, this is nice. But I like Hip Hop."
So after that we listened to TobyMac. (If he's gonna listen to hip hop, it might as well be decent. That and it's the only hip hop I have.)
It was an interesting trip, altho I can safely say I'm pretty glad I don't have to make it ever again.
My dad got back today. Whoot! He's majorly jet-lagged, but he did manage to stay awake long enough for a friend and I to go hang out with Abba for a bit. It's been way too long since I've done that. I'm pretty sure we're hanging out again next week too.
That said, I'm gonna go skip my homework and watch Wentworth Miller...I mean Prison Break.
Love and peace or else!
Cleo