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Published: October 26th 2006
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Until I get home for Christmas!!!
**Warning: If you're an animal rights activist, don't look on page 2 of the pictures**
I had the option: an 8 hour bus ride, or three days thraveling through the Mekong Delta stretch. Hmmmmm.....quick decision! Boat trip!
From the back packers district in Saigon, myself and 20 other foreigners (ranging from every age and country) boarded a small bus to be driven out of the city and 3 hours South to the first stretch of river. It was Wednesday October 11th, and I expected to be in Phnom Penh. Cambodia by Friday night. Nothing to it!
The first day, we headed to My Tho which is the quiet riverside capital of Tien Giang province. My Tho is a ridiculously poor town (which is strange because it's the closest city on the Mekong to HCMC and it sees hoards of tourists daily...) and its inhabitants survive on cultivating rice, coconuts, other fruits and the biggie...tourism. But I can see how the town remains poor, since our whole tour got off the bus, simply bought water and cheap rain jackets and boarded our first of many boats.
After heading West
along the river for an hour, we had to change into smaller boats. Only 4 people per boat. Plus we were given wicked cool hats to wear for the journey...sadly we weren't allowed to keep them. We 'parked' the boat on a patch of dry land and followed a slim path until we came to a small grouping of houses which turned out to be a coconut candy factory! Oh the fun! Our petite and energetic tour guide gave us the lowdown on the candy making process and we got to have all the free samples we wanted! Mmmmmmmm........we watched the ladies package the small candies with lightening fast speed and of course, for only a dollar a package, bought up a storm. They had a great little business going: let you taste the product, show you how its made and sell it remarkably cheap. Good on' them!
Next to the coconut candies were bottles and bottles of some sort of fruit liquor mixed among snakes, scorprions and other HUGE insects (cheap out the creepy picture below). I was going to buy one for my brother but decided against it because if it broke in my pack, I might
seriously die from fright. Look at the picture, trust me, they were freaky. Scarier then anything I've seen in Mexico!
And as another insentive to buy honey from the workshop across from the coconut huts, we were sat down, told to face one particular direction and given the most delicious honey tea straight from the combs. All of a sudden, three old men came out with traditional instruments and started playing for us. They were in turn joined by two women who took turns singing. I have to admit, the singing wasn't all too fabulous...as I found myself cringing a little when the top notes were missed. It was like a mix between screaching opera and Japanese Enka. Can anyone imagine that sound? I've got it on video so I'll show you at some point.
For lunch, we stopped at a small little shack with plactic chairs. We all got some noodles and for the fish lovers in the group, a small man went over to a puddle, pulled out a net and wrung in a fish. When I say 'puddle', you did read that correctly. A puddle. Of brown water. So gross. I'm all about adventurous eating
and sampling strange and cool things but if you think I'm going to eat a fish which came from a brown puddle in your front lawn you are SOURELY mistaken! Luckily, I had already proclaimed my vegetarian status and wasn't offered any. (I think only 2 people sampled it...)
We managed to make it to Can Tho that evening, after waiting two hours to get our mini bus onto a ferry that was delayed because of...flooding. I know, I found it strange aswell that a boat could be so affected by flooding, but yeah, it's the Mekong...what are ya gonna do?!
My travel buddy for this leg of my journey was Sarah Hitchins from Australia. That night we shared a room and had a yummy dinner at Nambo in the centre of the city. The hotel staff had promised to wake us up at 6am so we ALL were in bed by 10pm. We weren't exactly a party bunch:P
In the morning, we left on a small boat for Cai Rang and the floating market. You can see from the pictures that life on the river is QUITE different from life on land, ANYWHERE! The locals were
pretty interesting to watch and I'm sure they're quite used to seeing groups like ours go by on our boats... The funniest thing (or rather grossest) was seeing how they used the 'facilities' while onboard, and TRUST me, I wasn't watching for this, we all just kinda 'saw it'. So, the way you go about doing it is: Go out onto the deck of your boat and straddle the hole on a plank of wood hanging off the side. Then you have to haul a rubber circular shade up and over you until your 'bottom' is concealed. Then you 'go' in the river. Yet another reason I was NOT going to eat anything that came from the freakin Mekong River! (sorry if anyone found that last paragraph inappropriate...just trying to give you an accurate depiction of life down here!)
We rode the river West for a few more hours. Watching the slow way of life along the way. We turned down a small canal off the main river and docked the small boats. We were led through a swamp-like path which came out eventually at a rice paper producing hut. The process was actually fascinating, and since I thoroughly
enjoy eating rice paper spring rolls, I was more then intrigued into how they were produced. But to be honest, I couldn't REALLY understand everything that our 'almost-English' speaking guide was saying, so I sort of just figured it out myself. The rice is (somehow) liqified into a watery mixture and spread thin over a heated cricular type drum. Then it's covered while the next one is being made. Once it's formed its shape, it's taken from the drum and laid on a drying rack that then sits in the sun for a day while it properly dries flat. As so is my professional description of how rice paper is made! (Just look at the pictures...they're worth a thousand words) Plus the guy operating the rice liquid mixture was HOT! (Not as hot as the valet driver in Vung Tau though)
**I'm only going to add this next bit of information because it's no longer embarassing, it's just funny, and those of you who know me well...know that I can be "clumsy" at times. A few of us were taking longer then the others watching the rice paper process, and we got eagerly called back to the boat. As
I was wearing flip flops, when I stepped into the swampy goodness, I slipped backwards and fell on my ass into the mud. I burst out laughing and picked myself up. My ass was seriously COVERED in mud! Yet the way I like to deal with embarassing situations is to just tell EVERYBODY what I've done, and laugh it off. The only thing brusied was my ego and I got the mud out of my shorts with that fresh river water I've been mentioning...no harm done and one more instance of Krysta being clumsy. Plus I got a whole bench to myself on the next boat as I was soaking wet from the waist down. hehehehe**
In the late afternoon, we transferred from the small boats into a minivan which was going to take us to the border town of Chau Doc. Before that though, we stopped at the Thot Not Crocodile Farm. And I am SO Glad I'm not an animal rights activist because the stuff I saw in there would have one such person FLIPPING OUT!!! First we saw a corocodile being skinned, which was disgusting but fairly interesting to see the process of. Like a car
accident on the highway, you know it's morbid to look but you DO! It's just human curiosity. And after waking through the farm and being scared half to death a dozen times from 'jumpy' crocoldiles, we came across the SMALLEST cage which was housing two black bears. What black bears were doing at a crocodile farm, I have no idea, but they didn't look all too happy, and I shuddered to imagine their fate.
One last stop at a Pagoda, half way up a big mountain, and we were in Chau Doc. This small border town of only 100,000 was actually quite pleasant and our group (now only 8 people) was disappointed we'd be leaving so early the next morning. We had the afternoon to explore however, and Sarah and I walked through the many markets, met a delightful older man running an English book store and stopped for what would be our last Vietnamese coffee. That evening, we all went out for dinner together on (yet another) boat which rested ahainst the shore. The restaurant was a little 'nicer' then we'd become used to over the trip there but it was a nice ending to our 2nd day.
working with a knife like that...
I hope they have workman's compensation!Okay, day 3. Almost done people. Again we were up at the crack of dawn and led down the streets with out packs on a tuktuk. We walked through town, down to the port and boarded a small boat with only enough seats for the lot of us. We toured around the floating villages and fish farms, stopped off to feed the fish and get the low down of the whole 'fish farming' process and then stopped in on at a family's home. The family welcomed us as we walked the dangerously thin planks of wood up to their home on the river (no, I didn't fall in!). Inside, the whole large family lived in two rooms, with only 2 walls to each room. The front room looked like a show room of handmade scarfves, purses, hats etc. And one of the daughters was busy working away on a loom. In our group was a set of twins from France named Fabrienne and Severine, and when we noticed that the two younger girls in the family were twins as well, we set about trying to get them to take a picture together. Distracted by the mention of twins, the
old tooth-less granmother brought us to the back of the wall and pointed to the ceiling where a cross of sticks hung from the rafters with some sort of cloth-looking thing over it. When we asked what we were looking at, it was eventually translated to us that we were looking at the placentas of the twins. Yeah. We were looking at placenta. Loevly! To each their own though! It was a sign of good fortune to keep them hanging there, so good on them!
It took us another 3 hours to reach the Immigration office (on the water). We had to wait while our guide took our passports to get Cambodian VISA stickers and stamp us out of Vietnam. Then another bus up the river 10 mins and we came to a half-submerged dock where we had to jump from the boat, decide to leave our shoes on or take them off and struggle to shore to get our passports stamped INTO Cambodia. Only a 30 minutye process for all of us, and then we were back onto the boat. More then THREE gruellingly slow hours later, we arrived at a factory building where were we pointed at
by the locals and begged for money by the children, and shoved into a dodgy looking van inside the factory. None of us had any REAL idea where we were, but a fast talking Khmer guy loaded us onto a bus with those reassuring words, "Yes, Phnom Penh, Yes."
TWO bumpy hours later...(man, you're all reading this SOOOO much faster then it took to actually do...) we arrived in Phnom Penh. PHEW! So glad to be at my destination point.
The boat journey was DEFINITLEY worth it and I'd do it all over again if I had the choice. I met some awesome people to spend the hours talking to while aboard the boat and I learned a HECK of alot about Mekong life and how they live.
But enough of Vietnam, onto the adventures in Cambodia!
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Adam
non-member comment
Yeah lets get to Cambodia already...