Crossing the Mekong Delta to Cambodia

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On our last day in Saigon we had an impressive day at the Cu Chi tunnels. These tunnels were dug by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam war and are so tiny that most Westerners do not fit in. It’s an impressive network and from above the ground you can’t imagine that hundreds of people were living there. They made all sorts of (horrific and painful looking) traps to protect themselves from their enemies. Of course we had to check the tunnels out for ourselves (despite my claustrophic tendencies I had to have a go). After a while the tunnels got narrower and narrower and I started feeling extremely uncomfortable and cramped, so I was glad to see the light at the end of the tunnel (yes, literally!).

Our guide was a charismatic Vietnamese guy who had plenty of personal stories about the war to share and fascinated us all day. (A nice change from our "Spiderman" guide in My Son)

Back in Saigon we found the popular Sinh Café (tricky, as pretty much every tour operator now calls itself a ‘Sinh Café’) and booked a 2 day tour through the Mekong Delta, dropping us off in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, at the end.

After many days of rainy weather we finally got lucky with beautiful sunny weather. Our trip through the floating market, to the coconut sweet factory and rice cake factory was an enjoyable boat ride. The floating market was a little simpler than I’d imagined, only a couple of boats, whereas Id expected about 50 or so....😊 A smart way in which these tradesmen show the goods they sell is by hanging the goods from a large pole on their boat. The coconut candy factory was fun…and we got to try the end product, which was tasty. Anyone with fillings should watch out though, this is extremely sticky stuff - don’t be surprised if you pull the filling out in the process!

Our trip then led us to the place where we were going to spend the night: the not so very exciting town of Chau Doc. It seems like the only reason people visit this town is for an overnight stay during their Mekong Delta tour - and there is one designated hotel and one restaurant where everyone eats (the only one with an English menu maybe?). It was a good night’s sleep and an early morning, so it worked for us!
The next morning was another sunny day and we set off to our next boats. We had a tiny lady with her young daughter who was steering our little rowboat through the floating village. With strong winds, it seemed like we were moving backwards rather than forwards so I grabbed a paddle and started helping us along. Respect to these women, that is some hard work they’re doing! It was a beautiful trip, taking us along houses where little kids were playing on rafts in the water and rafts where fish were laid out to dry in the sun. We stopped at a Muslim village (I didn’t know there was a Muslim population in Vietnam) where they wove beautiful scarves and where the 10 year old girls were hardened saleswomen: “Lady, you buy waffles? Two-for-one dollah! Look look, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10 waffles, for five dollah!” And that was repeated a couple of times, they don’t take no for an answer! (So we opted for the banana kind.)

After this boat trip we switched to a motor boat which would take us across the border to Cambodia. A scenic trip which led us along the smallest villages where whole families were bathing in the river, or washing in the river alongside cows and dogs. As we got nearer to the border you could see the change in the buildings, we spotted several beautiful temples which we later saw lots of in Cambodia. After several hours of sitting on a hard wooden bench we were glad to stretch our legs at the border. We were so thankful to get our passports back (as we switched boats these were taken from us by a group leader, who took our money and got onto another boat, which made me nervous to say the least.) and get our stamps for Cambodia. After a pretty flavorless lunch prepared at the border (cup noodles) we got to Phnom Penh that afternoon, where we were dropped off at a busy and fun-looking hostel. While we didn’t have to stay there, our room was part of our tour so we were happy to crash in our windowless room J After enjoying a dinner in a nearby German ‘biergarten’ we headed back to our hostel where we caught up with some fellow travelers from Belgium. Turns out they had been traveling the same route as us but had had some less fun experiences (their overnight bus had been in an accident, they had been robbed while they were sleeping,…..) The rainy days we’d had at the start didn’t seem so bad in comparison.

We got ready for a day of exploring Phnom Penh the next day....

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