Where the Mekong River Goes

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So, you will by now have gathered that we are really quite taken with Saigon. In fact, it has brought me full circle from Quy Nhon - undoubtedly my lowest point - and I, along with my three companions, will now be really rather sad to wave the country goodbye in a few days time.

3 October 2010

I am pleased to report that, notwithstanding the overnight construction right outside or bedroom window, we awoke rested and ready to enjoy whatever experiences today was to bring. Not all hotel rooms in Vietnam come with windows but for last night and tonight we have paid the extra for a room with a window. The upside of this is that, this morning, we were woken up by the sun rather than a nagging feeling that we must have overslept but the downside is that you might be awoken before strictly necessary by the constant buzz of Vietnamese life (or, indeed, construction) on the streets below.

Having failed to make it to the War Remnants Museum either yesterday or the day before, we resolved that today was the day. This morning, for the first time since we arrived in Saigon, the sun decided that it wished to accompany us on our walk. Rain also put in an appearance or two. We made our way back towards the market. It got hotter and hotter and Gregg continued to insist that we were going in the right direction. Life buzzed around us, as it does here, as we passed a row of sports shops/shacks and the sun got hotter and hotter.

We could not have possibly mistaken the fact that we had arrived at the War Remnants museum since the grounds to the front of it are packed with both US and Vietnamese aircraft, tanks and artillery. The exhibits inside were sobering but I am becoming more and more convinced that past and current propaganda will prevent us from ever really understanding exactly what happened here and why.

We would have had a pleasant stroll back to the hotel had it not been for monsoon season making rearing its head once again. Surprise, surprise, we were all without rain coats or umbrellas. A dive into a coffee shop followed. Fried rice with salty chicken is remarkably palatable.

The afternoon was spent making arrangements to leave Vietnam. For us, obtaining passport photos and for Scott & Sara, Malaria pills, not to mention the fact that we all needed to book our onward tickets. If it is possible to just turn up without booking transport in Vietnam, I have missed that bit. Long distance transport is almost always very busy - I imagine because the standard form of transport for most is the moped rather than car - and therefore booking ahead is all but mandatory.

We returned to Mumtaz for another amazing Indian meal and then all headed for an early night - today was a practical day rather than one for absorbing Vietnamese culture.

4 October 2010

Early rise - predictable.

Very nice bus - refreshing.

This morning our trip to the Mekong Delta and then in to Cambodia began. I felt sad to be leaving Saigon as we waved goodbye to District 1 and headed out towards the Delta. The roads were, once again, jam packed and I am sure that in the first hour we really only travelled a few miles. Nevertheless, we eventually lost the high rise and found ourselves back amongst paddy fields.

We are now in the last month of the rainy season and therefore the Mekong is pretty swollen. This means that a considerable amount of the land is flooded. Life goes on, market stall holders sit amongst impossibly constructed domes of their wares, motorbikes speed on by and horns endlessly hoot. Vietnam, I have come to understand, is chaotic. Vietnam is constantly buzzing. Vietnam is, above all, a dichotomy. Mobile phone shops have hustled in along side road top markets, conical hats bob along on Honda motorbikes and East, at times, becomes indistinguishable from West.

The Mekong Delta is no different. It is both staggeringly beautiful and alarmingly ugly. The ugliness is pollution and commercialisation. The beauty is in the realisation that, to the people of these provinces, the river really is the bread of life, the jungle lined banks and the friendliness of its people.

The trip itself was somewhat formulaic and took in a coconut candy factory and a brick factory together with a lunch taken on a Mekong Island. We travelled on at least three different size of boats - depending on the size of the inlets that our captain was navigating.

Vietnamese tours deliver and fail in that they attempt to show you a snippet of real life but leave you with the feeling that whatever factory, market or eatery you are visiting has been developed, or indeed exploited, largely to bring in the tourist buck. I am not sure whether that is pessimism or realism but there it is.

Since it is the rainy season, the Mekong is not only swollen but also brown due to the accumulation of silt. Our guide tells us that it is not so in the dry season and we will have to trust him on that front. The banks are lined with water coconut which is planted for stabilising them, but not eaten. Water coconuts look like enormous star anise and not a great deal like their edible cousins. As we made our way towards our lunch stop, locals floated past us in all manner of sizes and shape of boat. Some just watching the world go buy, some transporting heavy loads and other going about their daily lives in their floating homes.

We left our boat behind and walked through the jungle to lunch which consisted of freshly wrapped spring rolls and Elephant Ear Fish - fresh from the Mekong. Elephant Ear Fish is a white fish and is extremely tasty if slightly alarming to look at.

We finished the day in the biggest city on the Mekong - Can Tho - and, remarkably, seriously struggled to find a place to eat. We ended up in a local eatery with no English menu and only a friendly local on the next table for assistance. We ordered what she suggested and, unfortunately, it was not what any of us had bargained for. Interesting but, sadly, not particularly palatable. The friendly local talked us through the ingredients but non of us were convinced that the white spongy bits of “beef” were the kind of beef that we are used to eating at home…

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Photos

3 Lemon Smoothies
mmmmmmmmmmmmm

Travelling in style...
Mekong style.

Ruins
An all too frequent sight along the banks of the Vietnamese Mekong

Bridge
We stopped just near here and crossed it on our way to lunch