From Ho Chi Minh City to the Mekong Delta

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We woke up early (around 5:30) on Saturday and looked outside to see the city was already roaring to life. In the park across the street from our hotel, people were walking, stretching, playing badminton, and looking like the day had begun in earnest. The haze was prominent, as it had been yesterday morning, but as we had another delightful breakfast at the rooftop restaurant of our hotel, the sky began to clear somewhat. It was fun to look down at the traffic from the angle of the 12th floor, and while it was already hot, there was enough of a breeze to feel comfortable.

It was also fun looking at the breakfast selections at the buffet. There were the usual baguettes with jam and butter, fresh fruit, and good strong coffee, and also a selection of fried rice, sea moss soup, fish-stuffed cabbage rolls, among other treats. (The cabbage rolls were quite delicious!)

Back to our room, for yet another session of re-packing our bags. Travel is an amazing opportunity to misplace your belongings in any number of zippered compartments, and we spent a little while deciding how best to stuff everything back in our bags for the trip to the Pandaw boat on the Mekong. One last check of email, and we were off.

Our meeting place for the boat trip was another (much fancier!) hotel not far from ours, and a $2 taxi ride got us there in 10-15 minutes. There was a moment when it seemed that perhaps our taxi driver wasn’t so sure where he was going, which always causes a bit of concern, but we arrived promptly at 8:30 as planned.

We were greeted by a friendly young Vietnamese man named Thinh, who welcomed us and took our luggage and directed us to relax in the lobby or at the rooftop pool while we waited for departure by bus to the boat, which was a 2-hour drive away. We chatted with the only other American couple who would be on the boat, an older couple named Jack and Barbara who live near Chicago. Eventually, we headed off with about ten or so other passengers. A larger group left on a bus just before us - they are a group of New Zealanders traveling together, and they had already been together for a couple of days in Ho Chi Minh City. The group on our bus included mostly Australians, several of whom are travel agents, a mysterious Canadian/Irish couple, and the other American pair. Thinh is the designated guide for our small group, and will accompany us on our shore excursions while we are still in Vietnam, and while he doesn’t describe himself as a “SuperStar Tour Guide,” he is friendly and animated and full of information and I like him immensely.

Along the drive to the port of My Tho, he told us about the building and development going on around Ho Chi Minh City, the cost of land in the developing suburbs around the city ($2500-3500 US per square meter!), what kinds of jobs people do, what sort of roadside businesses we were driving past, the differences between the people and culture of the North, Central, and South Vietnam. He talked to us about the importance of family in Vietnamese culture, some of the problems facing the government ("Corruption, traffic, and exploding population!"), agriculture, and lots of other tidbits. He speaks English well, but with an accent that many of us were struggling. He would look at all of us and read our politely puzzled faces, understanding that we weren’t quite grasping his words, so he would repeat himself a time or two, adding gestures and smiling hopefully at us. Eventually, it would all come together and one of us would suddenly get it and repeat a key word or two. Then everyone would nod with a bit of relief and satisfaction, and the cycle would begin again.

For most of the drive, the road was lined with narrow little shops and businesses of all kinds. They each seemed to specialize, and we saw shops selling car batteries, others selling floor tiles, others seeing nothing but rolls of wire. My scratchy notes tell me we saw shops selling, among other things: sunglasses, bricks, whole roasted chickens, cell phones, motorcycle helmets, motorcycle seats, motorcycle tires, cell phones, corrugated sheet metal, and wedding dresses. Also along the road were stands selling baguettes, or baskets of dried fish, or sticky rice wine in plastic bottles of the kind vegetable oil might come in. It was busy, but the traffic was less prone to using their horns.

Along the way, we were given a bit of a briefing about life on the boat, and made a quick stop to use the “Happy Rooms” (as Thinh referred to the restrooms.) We arrived at the dock around noon to board the boat, a beautiful Burmese-built wooden ship with 30 cabins and three levels. There are 44 passengers on this cruise, and something like 26 crew (Burmese, Vietnamese, and Cambodian) and they don’t miss an opportunity to smile and anticipate our every need. We had been told that when boarding the boat after being on land, we would remove our shoes to have them cleaned, but on our arrival, the staff actually removed our shoes for us as we boarded the boat! (Since then, they do allow us to remove them ourselves, but their attention to other details is quite amazing, as I’m sure to rave about later.)

We gathered for a quick demonstration of the lifejackets and some information about our plans for the afternoon and then went to our cabins to settle in. Our luggage had been delivered to our rooms and with great delight we really unpacked for the first time on this trip. The cabins are about 12 feet square, with two twin beds with drawers and cabinets underneath, a little closet, and an unexpectedly roomy bathroom with a full-size shower. We’ve got air conditioning, a full-size window, a safe, a hairdryer, bathrobes, and constantly replenished bottled water. It’s quite amazing.

Lunch was served buffet style - I can’t even recall what we had exactly, but it was a variety of Asian and Western-style salads, soup, and fruit. While we ate lunch, the boat cast off and began moving up the Mekong, and after lunch, we sat on the top-level sundeck and tried not to blink so we wouldn’t miss anything. In the meantime, our freshly-cleaned shoes were lined up outside the dining room for us to retrieve.

At this point, the Mekong is a wide (1-2 km) thoroughfare dotted with silt-scooping cranes - they dig silt up from the bottom of the river and put it on huge barges which carry it to Ho Chi Minh City (a slow 2-day journey) to be used for mixing cement and other construction uses. There were also smaller boats of various types, and while the traffic is less concentrated and more slow-moving than on the streets, it appears to be almost as random to my untrained eye. There certainly are no discernable rules about staying to the right, but everyone maneuvers safely around each other. The passing boats almost always have laundry hung out to dry, often have hammocks strung under canopies, potted plants and huge water jugs on deck, and sometimes children waving.

The heat at this point in the day was remarkable, even with the breeze being created by the motion of the boat, so we eventually retreated to the air-conditioned comfort of our cabin for an hour of rest. I lay on my bunk and watched the shore slide by out the window until I finally lost the battle with my eyelids and dozed for a bit. I felt deliciously sinful to be napping in the middle of the day. In fact, every minute so far on this boat has felt deliciously sinful and don’t think for a moment that I’m not savoring every single second (well, except maybe when I’m asleep.)

The shoreline of the river looks exactly like the scenery in every Vietnam war movie I’ve ever seen. The river is broad and calm and the vegetation spills into the water in every shade and texture of green you can imagine. The surrounding land is flat, but the treeline is jagged, with palm trees of every height, and grasses and water hyacinths and trees filling in every square inch in between. (I’m told that many of them are fruit trees, but I can’t tell from this distance.) Small narrow fishing boats (maybe 15-20 feet long) dot the water, as do small ferries carrying people and bikes from one side to the other. Larger boats loaded with bamboo or fruit or bundles of palm leaves or bags of rice move up and down the river gracefully with people squatting on deck or rowing or swinging in hammocks. It’s so surreal and movie-like that I keep waiting for the credits to roll.

After a bit of rest, we headed out on deck to join everyone for our first shore excursion. We climbed aboard three small tourist boats (20-24 seats) for a trip to a pottery and brick factory, and then to visit a bonsai and fruit garden near Cai Be. The crew carefully helped everyone down the steps and onto the boats, handing us off from one to the other until we were safely in our seats. (I didn’t really need the help, but some of the older passengers were quite challenged by the uneven steps and making the transition onto the small boats.) As we left the bigger boat, we were each handed a little insulated shoulder bag containing a cold water bottle and a wrapped wet towelette.

The tour of the brick and pottery factory was surprisingly interesting. There were dozens of huge dome-shaped kilns, probably 40 feet high. We watched women loading blocks of raw clay into a simple machine that extruded long strips of bricks, which were then cut into appropriate lengths, loaded onto carts, and rolled away to be arranged to dry. At the same time, some other women were loading huge clay pots into the kilns, stacking them far above their heads by climbing on rough wooden scaffolding and wrestling these enormous pots into careful pyramids. We were told that the kilns can hold as many as 30,000 smaller pots at one time! The kilns are fired by burning rice hulls - nothing goes to waste here, which will be a recurring theme - and are fired for about a month before cooling for ten days or so. The weight that these slender little women were lifting and rolling around on carts was unbelievable. We also watched a woman working on smoothing and shaping large pots to get them ready for drying and firing. She has worked here for ten years (though she hardly looked 20 years old) and can make up to 30 pots a day, for which she earns about $2. (That’s $2 per day, not per pot.) These pots are, I’m sure, the same ones we see at Home Depot or Four Seasons Garden Center selling for $30 or $40 or $50 each, though I can’t imagine how they get transported there in one piece.

Back to the small boats to putt a bit further inland along smaller canals until we reached a bonsai and fruit garden. We admired the bonsai and were served plates of watermelon, mango, papaya, and rambutan (a lychee-like fruit that I will miss terribly once I’m back home.) We also had an opportunity to hold and take photos with an enormous python, and I couldn’t resist, knowing it would make a good Bongo photo. (For those who don’t know, Bongo is our stuffed monkey, who often accompanies us and has quite a lovely collection of photo albums of his travels.) The 70-pound snake was beautiful (if you happen to find snakes beautiful) and felt like an long, smooth, warm muscle draped over my shoulders and wrapped around my torso - and Bongo sat proudly for his photo!

Along these smaller canals, we saw people’s homes on the riverbank, and people washing dishes and swimming and bathing in the water. Again, children all along the way waved and smiled, sometimes exuberantly and sometimes shyly. People rode bikes on paths alongside the river, dogs trotted up and down the same paths, and chickens scratched along the bank here and there. (Again, I was waiting for the soundtrack to begin rolling along with the credits…)

As you might imagine, everyone’s cameras were getting a workout, and if past experience is any predictor, about 1 out of 20 of my photos will really be worth looking at again. (What did we ever do before digital photography? Oh yeah, we took a lot of bad pictures and paid a lot of money to have them developed…) But taking photos also presents any interesting and slightly squirm-inducing dilemma: Is it intrusive to be snapping shots of people going about their daily life? How would I feel if I were home, mowing my lawn or watering my garden, and busload of tourists drove slowly by aiming cameras at me and waving like idiots? I suppose I would be shocked and self-conscious, but then again, I’m not accustomed to it and I suppose the people we were seeing experience this every day. But does that make it alright? I’m not entirely sure, but I have to confess that it didn’t stop me. On the other hand, when I have wanted to take a more close-up photo of someone, I have asked permission by pointing at my camera with a quizzical look on my face and asking “Photo OK?” NO one has said no, and everyone has apparently enjoyed then seeing their image on the LCD display afterward.

We arrived back at the Pandaw boat around 6:00, which gave us time for a shower (which I desperately needed) before cocktail hour and dinner. The amount of liquid I am consuming and then immediately discharging via my sweat glands is remarkable. I feel very grateful that the heat itself doesn’t really bother me like it used to, but I don’t particularly enjoy the feeling of the sweat constantly trickling down my ribcage and having the backs of my legs stick to anything I sit on. I wish I had had the guts to cut off all my hair before this trip, but that would probably look even worse than I do now with my hair either plastered to my head or tucked up under a cap.

The dinner gong sounded and mom and I headed to the dining room with an eye to sitting at a different table than we had at lunch, just for the purpose of mixing with and meeting more people. We were lucky enough to sit with a trio of women from New Zealand who were quite animated and entertaining and interested in talking about American politics - not my favorite subject, but it is interesting to hear how closely the rest of the world is following the presidential campaign. (“It’s at the top of the news every day!”) Actually, two of the three women were quite animated and the third was almost silent, though clearly following the conversation and nodding and smiling enthusiastically. Eventually her companions told us, “Oh, Jackie just had a stroke and she can’t really talk much- the words just won’t come out, or they come out all wrong. We love to see what happens - she wanted to order wine on the plane, but kept saying ‘water’ instead!” All of them laughed uproariously, including Jackie herself. We found her sense of humor, and that of her companions, quite refreshing, if a bit unusual!

For those who enjoy the food reports, dinner was delicious - we started with a selection of Vietnamese appetizers (egg rolls and other tasty dumpling-type items), then had chicken and black mushroom soup, then braised bean curd stuffed with minced pork, sautéed spinach with shallots, and fried rice in pineapple (meaning it was served in a scooped-out pineapple.) Dessert was more fresh fruit, though mom had been not-so-secretly hoping for something with a bit of chocolate. At the rate we are eating and not exercising, I won’t fit into any of my clothes by the end of the week. For the first few days of this trip I had little appetite, which was probably a function of the heat and time change and excitement, but my appetite is back in full force, and with each meal I seem to teaching my stomach to expect even more at the next. The food on the boat so far is quite tasty, but I would say it’s not terribly adventurous or unusual, and is probably designed with Western palates in mind. No complaints here, but now that I’ve finally learned to enjoy a bit of spice, I will look forward to more opportunities to challenge my taste buds when we’re back on land!

After dinner, we were provided with a performance of traditional Vietnamese music on the sundeck - which by this time of evening could be called the moondeck. At least one passenger appeared to fall asleep in his chair before dinner was over, so some people opted to go straight to their rooms, including mom. I went to the performance, partly so I wouldn’t disappoint Thinh, who was so enthusiastically (dare I say, desperately) encouraging people to attend. The musicians played four traditional stringed instruments (two resembled guitars, and two resembled nothing familiar to me) and there were also three singers who performed, and while I’m sure they were excellent, my Western ear does not appreciate the tone and pitch of traditional Vietnamese music, I’m afraid. I slipped off before it was over and sat on the chairs outside our cabin, two decks down, listening to the music from a distance and enjoying the evening breeze before calling it a night.

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Photos

Boat names are always interesting...
This one's called "Phuoc Long"