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Published: September 11th 2008
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Ban Tre District
My three companions on the Mekong Delta tour. From left: Graham, Andrew, Ray. .
Soon after crossing into Vietnam the Mekong splits into many smaller rivers, all seeking their way into the South China Sea. This fan of great waterways with constructed channels connecting them has - for centuries - been the basis of a unique way of life. The delta is awash with barges, produce boats, passenger ferries, private boats. A little Vietnamese language plus a lot of spare time would together yield a very rewarding travel experience.
Within two minutes of stepping onto Vietnamese soil we heard great whoopings and shrieks of “Gillian! Gillian!” from across the street. Andrew’s voice is unmistakable. The tourist launch we'd taken from Phnom Penh had deposited Ray and I onto a bamboo raft which was a floating restaurant: just the place for me to drink a half-pint glass of Vietnamese tea while the waitress practiced her English with Ray. We watched the mix of traditional and modern boats passing and commented that the floating buildings showed a higher standard of living than their Cambodian counterparts. We were just beginning to negotiate a
cyclo fare when we heard from across the street. Andrew and Graham, in a brand new minivan with a smiling driver, were
Vin Long District
A traditional craft on the Mekong: Ray and myself. looking for the hotel where we’d planned to meet up.
We four friends shared a four-day tour of the Mekong delta. We chose three towns to sleep in, drove quite considerable distances, and explored some of the waterways in large and small boats. It is a huge area with a complex ecology, an old culture and a complicated history. Four days gave a fascinating glance at the area, but my impressions remain superficial.
The delta is a fascinating network of rivers flowing to the South China Sea, criss-crossed by canals, large and small. What is island and what is land? Small country roads wend between villages, paddi fields and fruit orchards. Some are so narrow that only motorbikes can pass. They are spanned by hundreds of tiny bridges. These were once precarious bamboo structures called
monkey bridges, but the sturdy concrete replacements are almost as attractive.
This densely populated area is one of intensive agriculture. No spot of land is wasted. The abundance of water encourages rice farming and there are many orchards. Fruit and vegetables are exported to China. We saw a wholesale floating market, where boats advertise what they are selling by tying sweet corn
Ban Tre District
One attraction of the delta is its seafood ... or sweet potatoes to their masts.
The Mekong carries water from Tibet, Burma, China, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia. It has perhaps its greatest width at the time it crosses the border into Vietnam. It creates its own growing season; each year it carries fertile silt and deposits it in the plains of Laos and Cambodia. In Vientiane two years ago I peered from the top of steep clay banks metres below and saw vegetable gardens on the flat bed at the bottom, with the river reduced to a trickle between beds of beans and aubergines. This year the water was barely six inches from spilling its banks. The annual variation is about 30 metres. The Chinese have plans to damn the upper reaches under their control, but they say they will manage the flow to countries downstream. The fear remains that the Tongle Sap River will stop flowing backwards into Lake Tongle Sap, that the reduced water volume in the lake will decimate the fish population and deprive many SE Asians of their major protein source as well as of water.
I wonder what effect the Chinese engineering projects will have on the people of the Mekong delta.
Vin Long District
... the fried fish was particularly amazing. Travel Notes
Graham had to shop around to find a driver. It turned out that their hotel could provide transport at almost half of what the famed Sinh Café (246-8 De Tham Street) was quoting. The total transport cost was US$300.00 for four days; we split it between four, but there was space in the van for seven travelers. This included petrol, tolls, car ferries etc. Taking a guide would have had some advantages. The driver spoke no English, but the staff at the Spring Hotel in Saigon were extremely helpful and Graham devised our itinerary based on the Sinh Café offering, mediated by information from the Rough Guide, which suggested avoiding the major tourist centres. The driver checked carefully before we set out each day the name of the town we were heading for and the hotel staff translated the next day’s pickup time for us.
Thus we drove between three delta towns; we chose the following hotels:
Chau Doc - Chau Pho Hotel. Trung Nu Vutong noi dai. US$35.00 double/twin with breakfast. . We chose this because it was the cheapest hotel that could be booked online and we needed to arrange a Chao Doc District
The first thing I noticed on crossing into Vietnam from Cambodia was that the floating homes had a much higher proportion of purchased materials. Note the corrugated iron. meeting place.
Vin Long - Cuu Long Hotel. 1, Thang 5 St, Vinh Long. Email: cuulonghotelvl@hcm.vnn.vn $31.50 double/twin with breakfast. We chose this because it was the most expensive place listed in the Rough Guide. It is the least comfortable of the delta hotels we used, but has an excellent position overlooking the river and hosted an efficient tour office that organized a half day boat trip for us. This took in the floating market at Cai Be, which deals in wholesale produce, a traditional confectionary factory, small and large canals, a traditional rich family house and a sea-food lunch in a bonsai garden. The cost of US$9.00 for the tour, plus US$6.00 for the optional lunch seemed extraordinarily reasonable.
Ban Tre - Hung Vuong Hotel. 148-166 Hung Vuong St, Email: hungvuonghuesthouse@vnn.vn. Double/twin with breakfast cUSd400.000-550.000. Again, we chose this because it was the best hotel listed and commanded good river views.
How I’ve Been
It’s good to be catching up on these posts. I’ve missed the immediacy of the communication. Graham and I continue our leisurely progress across Guangxi Province, our luggage getting slowly heavier and heavier. I wrote my last entry in a
Ban Tre District
The big rivers are plied by a large number of modern vehicle ferries ... hard seat carriage, with an interested audience of standing passengers peering over my shoulder. Today we are in soft seat and our traveling companions are too sophisticated to be interested in a laptop.
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