Cambodia, there and back again! Part 1

I'm sitting on the side of the road in Aranyaprathet smoking an Indonesian cigarette and eating a packet of dried instant noodles from Vietnam. It's the 26th February and I should have been in Battambang, Cambodia right now. I'm actually about 100m from the Thai/Cambodian border but I'm not going there anymore. To be completely honest I don't know where I'm going, hell I don't even know where I'm going to be sleeping tonight.
I'm in a bit of a pickle, you see I have about 300 Thai Baht cash right now which could get me 1 night, or 2 - 3 days worth of food - it's one or the other. My Thai sim card expired yesterday.
The thought of sleeping rough is a very real one and I start to think about the possible places where it might be safe to sleep. Should I find a church or a Buddhist temple? Perhaps I should go to the train station? Should I just stay awake until tomorrow?

How did I get myself into this situation?...

How did I end up with a set of Visa stamps looking like this?

Cambodian immigration officers DGAF about crossing the border twice on the same day although to honest you can unofficially enter and leave Cambodia pretty easily by simply walking past the immigration office. 

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Around 30 hours ago I was in a train carriage, 3rd class (48 Baht - $2.20 NZD Feb 2019), from Bangkok, destined for the border town of Aranyaprathet. Don't let the 3rd class designation put you off, it's actually quite pleasant.

Aside from leaving a bag of longans in the fridge back at the hostel in Bangkok, everything was going swimmingly. I had my passport, debit cards, and Cambodian Visa; all I needed was to withdraw some USD from an ATM and I was away!

Burning off remnants of the harvest is common practice here

At the train neared the Cambodian border, the scenery began to change. I had noticed a steady declining trend in the level of infrastructure at each train station and village we passed.  The land on this side of Thailand was dry, giving off American wild west vibes. I'd seen stuff like this before, but only on the PS3, playing Red Dead Redemption.
Dried chaff and ashes drifted across the air into the carriage and settled on the floor where periodically they would spin around and form a mini whirlwind.

What's it like being a quasi broke guy in Hanoi,Vietnam?

This may cost $3 NZD but it's not the most economical source of calories

They say Vietnamese street food is quite cheap.
You can get cheaper food... A packet of instant noodles from the grocery store is about 4-5x cheaper than your typical bowl of street Pho

How do I know this? I'm living it.

It's been week two weeks since that magical piece of plastic went missing.
 Since them I have been converting Indonesian and Malaysian currency to Vietnamese Dong, and although it causes mild mental grief knowing how much bad of a deal I'm getting, it sure beats starvation.

I'd say it's probably a strange sight when a western foreigner visits the grocery store buying up packs of the cheapest instant noodles he can get his hands on. The thought of a tourist in Hanoi who refuses to buy Bahn Mi rolls or Pho off the street on the basis of it not being economically feasible must be a relatively rare one indeed.

Mikilet - Colman. Instant noodles for the people. Starting at 2000VND per pack. A Bahn Mi roll off the street will cost anything from 15,000- 30,000 VND. See the difference? 

Canned tuna, not the cheapest source of protein but it's a nice oily treat. 

My diet hasn't been too bad although I wouldn't say it's the optimum diet for human performance. I am lucky to be staying in a hostel which serves a decent cooked breakfast, and even more so for the food which the staff have shared with me from time to time. Although it takes one month for the earliest symptoms of scurvy to surface, I believe that without my daily slice of tomato included with the complimentary breakfast, I would surely be on my way towards the pirate life.

After a few days into the diet I really began to start thinking about nutrition and how important it is to eat a varied and rich diet; which is why when I was offered the chance to eat coagulated chicken blood and liver, I jumped at the opportunity to do so.

In an effort to keep morale high I do splurge from time to time on luxury food items such as cans of soft drink or biscuits but for the majority of the time, my diet consists of boiled eggs, oatmeal, instant noodles, and every second or third day some canned tuna.

Treat yoself.  This bag of instant pasta cost me 10,000VND. That white thing is a duck egg. I ate duck eggs before realising I could get chicken eggs about 40% cheaper at another place. Duck eggs have more energy but chicken eggs have a better cost to energy ratio. Unfortunately I also lost my shoes while I was in the Philippines. In Can Tho, due to an inability to find shoes in the right size I settled on a fake pair of Converse Chuck Taylors which cost me around $10 NZD. I wasn't expecting miracles but was hoping they would hold up for at least 3 months by which point I was expecting to be in Thailand. (Believe it or not, Vietnam is not a particularly good place to buy shoes, especially if you have feet larger than US 8 and walk further than 1km every day) At the tender age of 3 weeks, my shoes began showing symptoms of premature ageing; the grip on the underside of the sole had mostly worn off, and by week 5, the soles has fully worn through. I try not to do too much walking as that would increase the wear on my shoes. I prefer to do pushups as it breaks down my muscles rather than my shoes.

Letting go of some baggage

'This has been quite possibly been the most pleasant overnight journey I have ever made'

That's what I thought before I found out about what had happened earlier that day.

I had arrived in Hanoi after a 13 hour train ride from Hue. 

It was a sleeper train, equipped with a toilet and sinks with a mirror. There was a 4 hour delay from Hue station but that didn't matter as I had just brushed my teeth and soon I'd be feeling fresh and awake in the old quarter, eating breakfast. Unlike the sleeper busses, I had actually managed to doze off during the night which was great as it meant I wasn't going to waste daylight hours catching up on sleep. 

I began to pack up my gear. 

'Hang on.. my passport wallet isn't here'

I was rummaging through my day pack (where I keep everything important) completely puzzled as to where it could be hiding within my bag. I pulled everything out and then put it back in again.

I checked on the floor, the sides of the mattress, under my pillow. It was unlikely I'd find it in any of those places but hey, sometimes you need to expect the unexpected. 

Nothing.

'oh shit that's no good... wheres my wallet though?'

That too, was nowhere to be found.

That was the moment when I knew I had fucked up.

Ever since losing my wallet at the bus station in Kuala Lumpur back in October, I had been extremely cautious about making sure my valuables were in the right places, to the point where it had become a ritual.

Wallet and Passport - In my day pack. 

Cellphone - In my pocket.

Scan the area after sitting somewhere to ensure I have left nothing behind.

At this stage it had become second nature.

Arriving at the train station, I took a seat and spent a few minutes trying to get my head over what had just happened and what this meant for me.  

I had no Vietnamese currency, no debit card, and no passport. My accommodation was to be paid for in cash, and my travel Visa was going to expire in 8 days time.  Every solution that popped into my mind was reliant on one of items I was currently in need of. 

How do I get a new passport if I have no way to pay for it?

How do I pay for food and accommodation if I have no debit card to withdraw cash?

How to I apply for a new Visa if I don't have a passport or a means to pay for it?

I took a quick inventory of my food and drink. 600ml of water, half a pack of digestive biscuits, 150 grams of coated peanuts left over from my recent train journey. Unfortunately without something to stem my need for food, water, and shelter I was running running out of time.  

Luckily for me, I was in the capital city of Vietnam, and the New Zealand embassy was located in French quarter 2km away from the railway station. 

Like a man on a mission, I walked to the New Zealand embassy at a rapid pace completely ignoring the urban scenery around me; in fact I couldn't care less about any of that...