103 degrees in the shade

---

We are generally sleeping well, not able to keep our eyes open past 10:00 pm, and then waking up by 5:30 or 6:00 to go up on the sundeck for coffee and a look around. We're often the first ones there, and it's a pretty lovely way to start the day.

Off we went at 8:00 this morning on another small boat trip south along the lower Mekong River. This part of the river is full of floating fish farms - floating buildings, some as big as perhaps 60 feet long and 30 feet wide which serve as people’s homes and have suspended beneath them cages of carp or catfish or snapper which they grow and sell for export. These larger “farms” can raise up to 100,000 fish at a time, taking six months to raise them to full-size. We visited one of them, and on what would appear to be a sort of covered deck on the front of the house are several large square openings in the floor that absolutely boil with fish when they throw in food. They can buy fish food pellets in large bags - I was imagining that the Vietnamese writing on the bags said something like “Purina Fish Chow” - and they can also make their own fish food by cooking rice powder, corn, fish entrails, and other ingredients in big metal pots on the deck. The way they transport fish to the processing plants is interesting: they have large boats, which ride high in the water when empty, but when they transport fish, the bottom hold of the boat is filled with water, making the boats ride much lower. There are nets along the sides of the hull, so as they travel up the river, a constant supply of fresh water washes through the boats and the nets keep the fish inside. Apparently, these fish farms are a relatively new venture in Vietnam, begun in the mid-80’s after the Vietnamese learned these methods from the Cambodians.

Along the river we also saw rice husking factories, where they separate the hulls from the rice, and saw people carrying enormous baskets of rice to and from boats. The apparent strength and fortitude of these slightly-built men and women is truly impressive - I was sitting on a boat doing nothing, catching a breeze as we motored along, and I was sweating as if in a sauna. (Sweat is a recurring theme in all my entries, isn’t it?) I swear I haven’t seen a local person break a sweat yet.

The land along the river is extremely fertile, and everywhere there weren’t houses or other buildings, there were fields of corn or peanuts or spring onions or other crops.

A little history related to rice farming, according to our guide: There was a serious famine in Vietnam in 1945, caused by the Vietnamese people being encouraged by the Japanese to grow some kind of fibrous plant in place of rice. They were told that they would make a lot of money growing this other crop, but the Japanese actually had no intent of buying it from them as promised. Instead, they wanted to weaken the Vietnamese people by causing famine, so the army would be less of a threat to the Japanese. Many people died of starvation, but the Vietnamese never fell for that kind of trickery again!

We also spent some time in the city of Chau Doc, which has a fascinating and wonderful market where we wandered for a bit. This isn’t a tourist market, but the everyday market where the locals buy their food and other items. While we might go to Price Chopper once a week and stock up, people here, of course, are out buying what they need on a more daily basis. There were stalls selling vegetables, fruit, meat, fish, herbs, spices, chilis, noodles, shoes, incense, cigarettes and tobacco, crackers, shampoo and soap, medicine, and everything you can imagine. People were sitting behind or on their tables, weighing items and taking money, and when business was slow, they were plucking their grey hairs with the aid of a mirror and tweezers or getting a pedicure from their neighbor at the next stall. Meat was displayed out on open tables in the 90+ degree heat, and the often-unrecognizable bits of flesh often included hooves, teeth and tails. Live fish swam in metal tubs and when a customer wanted to buy, the vendor weighed the fish, then whacked it on the head and trimmed off all the fins with a large kitchen scissors. There were blocks of congealed blood, soup and noodle stands, and piles and piles of dried and not-so-dried fish parts. It was an absolute feast for the eyes (and nose) and I just kept snapping photos. Any trepidation I had about taking photos quickly evaporated when I realized that people mostly seemed to enjoy having their photo taken, and would happily pose and smile, or even beckon me to take their photo when they saw I had a camera.

My favorite moment of the day happened here in the market: I saw a large white duck, very much still alive, tied up in a plastic bag with its head and long neck hanging out, calmly lying on a pallet where two women sat. I approached and the younger of the two women spotted my camera and beckoned me to come closer and take a picture. As I did, she pulled a cell phone out of her pocket and began to fiddle with it. I thought perhaps she wanted her picture taken with her cell phone, thinking maybe it was a status symbol for her to have one (though everyone seems to) and wanted it in the picture. I gladly obliged, but then she began gesturing back and forth between me and the duck. Seeing that I was completely perplexed, she finally grabbed the duck and thrust it in my arms so she could take a picture of me with her cell phone camera! She certainly turned the tables on this silly tourist, and got a big laugh out of it! She showed me the photo on her cell phone and we exchanged big smiles and thank you’s. (I've been coached by our guide how to say "thank you" in Vietnamese, and I'm sure I mispronounce it horribly, but people seem to understand my intent.)

We also made a stop at a Cham village. The Cham are a Muslim minority in Vietnam, and they have a lovely mosque in their village near Chau Doc. They also clearly know how to make the most of the tourist traffic, and as we approached the village along a precarious wooden walkway, we were swarmed by young girls in head scarves carrying plastic baskets of cellophane-wrapped waffles and giving us the hard sell like we have not yet experienced. They followed us all the way to the mosque, attaching themselves to us sometimes two at a time, pointing at their waffles and plaintively chanting, “Madame, you buy from me. Six for one dollar, three coconut, three banana. Just one dollar, Madame, you buy from me.” The usual, “No, thank you” with the dismissive wave of the hand and lack of eye contact did absolutely nothing to dissuade them. Knowing we would pass back through the same gauntlet after visiting the mosque, I finally told one young girl I would buy on my way back, knowing I would need to make good on my promise. This produced a radiant smile, and she and her companions followed us to the mosque and stood just outside our circle while we listened to our guide tell us more about the Cham people and their culture. Every time I snuck a look in their direction, my appointed seller smiled broadly at me and pointed at herself, nodding happily. The other girls gave Academy-Award-worthy performances, mugging and gesturing, making sad faces and then sly smiles while they pointed at me and then themselves and their waffle baskets.

As we left the mosque (which we weren’t able to enter, but admired from the outside), the girls reconvened in a tight swarm around us, and I pulled out a dollar to pay my new best friend, who thanked me enthusiastically and added, “See you later, Madame!” Meanwhile, one of her competing sellers, another girl of about 10 or 12, decided that I was an easy mark and followed me almost all the way back to the boat. (I had hoped that buying the waffles would also buy me freedom from more hard-sell techniques, as I could show them I had already bought something and didn’t need more, but I sure didn’t understand the commercial culture of this group of young entrepreneurs!) She was glued to my side all the way, trying to play on the fact that I had taken a photo of the group of them. “Madam, you buy from me now. You take photo, so you must buy. Six for one dollar: three coconut, three banana. Buy from me, Madame.” I told her no, thank you, and kept walking, but she didn’t give up. “Madame, you must buy from me. You no buy, I cry. You buy from me, I happy. I need you buy, so I go school.” No, I said, no more today. “Madam , you buy me from me now. You no buy, I cry. You take photo, you must buy. You buy, I happy.” In a ridiculous and desperate attempt to make her give up, I pulled my empty pocket inside out and said, “No more money! I can’t buy.” She quickly resolved this problem by gesturing to the man behind me: “You get money. He give you money. You buy from me, Madame. You no buy, I cry.” She got an “A” for effort, and who knows what kind of havoc I might have caused for her in her social/commercial circle by refusing to buy from her, but I held my ground, partly annoyed and partly admiring of her persistence and partly wracked with guilt at being a wealthy tourist who wouldn’t give the kid a break.

The other cringe-worthy moment of the day came in the city of Chau Doc while we were waiting to board rickshaws for a ride through the streets. A woman with three young children (probably 3, 4 and 5 years old) wandered close to our group and the children began milling around amongst our legs with their hands held out in an apparently well-practiced begging gesture. They gently patted our legs and bodies to get our attention, and smiled and continued to hold out their hands absent-mindedly. While our guides hadn’t addressed the issue of begging, I’ve read enough to know that many people feel that giving money to begging children just encourages their parents to keep them begging on the streets rather than sending them to school, so I didn’t want to give them money (and had nothing smaller than 50,000 dong in my pocket anyway, which would have been a ridiculously large amount to give even if I wanted to. The kids were adorable and seemed more interested in watching some of our group struggle to climb into the rickshaws (which I have to admit was quite amusing.) When they began climbing a wrought-iron fence to smile and make faces at us through the rails, the mother lightly cuffed one of them on the side of the head and said something harshly, which caused the little girl to yelp and resume her begging stance. I cringed and felt helpless to know the correct response, so without language or other tools to communicate, I made a sad/disapproving face at the mother and turned away from all of them. (And then I vowed to make an appropriate donation to a charity helping Vietnamese street kids.)

A rickshaw ride was a great way to see 20 minutes worth of city streets while sweating gallons and feeling guilty about the fact that a 110-pound man was earning all of 70 cents to pedal my hefty self through the oppressive heat. At the beginning of the ride, a dozen or so of us were all riding around in a sort of caravan of rickshaws. I was near the back of the group, and as I looked ahead at the rest, two abreast in a pack, I found myself with the sudden and inappropriate compulsion to call out, “On Dasher, and Dancer, and Prancer and Vixen!” I was able to refrain. (I can be inappropriate, but not usually that inappropriate.)

We headed back to the little 10-passenger longtail boats, which took us back to our larger 50-passenger boat, which took us about an hour back upriver to our Pandaw ship in time for a late lunch and a quick journey along the Upper Mekong to the Cambodian border. There we sit now, anchored in the river, while some of the ship’s crew has taken a plastic grocery bag full of our passports and our Vietnamese exit papers and our Cambodian visa applications to shore to go through the hours-long formalities of the border crossing. (We were coached to check the “Nothing to Declare” box on the Cambodian visa application - which, luckily is true, I think. Who knows? I wouldn’t know what I’m supposed to declare, if anything…)

The heat seemed more oppressive than usual today, so when we got back to the ship I decided to put my alarm clock, which includes a thermometer, outside our room (in the shade.) When I checked it a few minutes later, it said 103.5 degrees. By contrast, late in the afternoon the temperature under the canopy on the sundeck was 88, which felt positively refreshing! (Our cabin tends to stay about 75 with the a/c constantly on low.)

Thanks to the wonders of life in the 21st century, we’re told we will have wifi available while in the port of Phnom Penh tomorrow, which is why you might be reading this and the previous several entries earlier than I had originally anticipated. If the wifi actually works and I can get the timing right, I might even be able to chat with Jaz online via instant messaging - imagine that! We’ve come a long way even from the first big trip Steve and I took in 1997, when we were delighted about being able to call home from Europe cheaply from payphones with a calling card.

---

These last few days, I am often reminded of an incident that happened when Dylan was about 5 years old and we took a trip to New York with Mom and Billy. We went to the Bronx Zoo and Dylan was sitting on Billy’s shoulders as we watched the seals in their pool. After a few minutes of quiet observation, Dylan asked, “Poppy, is this real or is this a dream?”

Right now, I know exactly how he felt.

---

Photos

A few floating "fish farms"
The one way up out of the water has been raised up for repairs and maintenance on the fish cages. (I don't know if the family continues living there while it's like that!)

Fruit stall at the market
Those vibrant pink/purple things are dragonfruit, which unfortunately don't taste nearly as good as they look, but they are beautiful!

Muslim girls selling waffles
"You buy from me, Madame!"

Comments

[bailee star]

this is great!
Jess, This is great--your pictures are amazing and stories are so descriptive that, as my dad might say, I don't even have to go there! This made me think of how much things have changed since I traveled in Asia in 1991. I wish this sort of technology was available--it's such an amazing way to preserve memories. Sounds like you guys are having quite an adventure--I can't wait to hear more--and compare stories--when you return! Love, Bailee