Up the Mekong without a paddle!...Post 10

---

So today we give "Poppy" our much maligned but much loved Minsk motorbike a rest.....We have found a boatman to take us all the way upstream to Vinh Long...The girl who arranged it for us says it should take around five hours which is longer than it would be by bike but this way we can kick back and relax all the way and enjoy seeing life on the Mekong river...
We had arranged to meet the girl at 8.30 in Ben tre town and follow her to where we were to pick up the boat. We suited up for the ride in the normal way; Big European helmets/mohawks/safety pads/armoured jackets/gloves/face masks and shades, Dennis Hopper eat your heart out..Our guide (all four foot eleven of her) was wearing elbow length flesh coloured satin gloves, lime pedal pushers, satin bolero jacket, kitten heels and a denim trilby style helmet....very cute, but it was difficult for us to look like the road toughened bike warriors that we are, as we had to follow a kewpie doll dressed for a party for a half an hour going northeast of Ben Tre via Chau Thanh to a tributary of the river where the boat was docked..
Oh the ignomy of it!
The boat, when we arrived was a short, flat bottomed, canopy style, rear engined thingummyjig...the deck was about 2 feet lower than the jetty and the jetty had a foot high concrete lip...You're probably thinking already what I hadnt thought until this point...How do we get a 200 kilo motorbike onto a flimsy looking passenger boat with no ramps over a concrete obstacle course? Answer ....You point a lot, look concerned, and leave it to the boatman and his wife..
The process took about 10 minutes and apart from a worrying oil patch appearing under the bike as it hit the deck all looked OK! I checked out all the underside of the bike and found no damage...The boatman, who from now on we shall refer to as Alvin due to a similarity in tone to the famous chipmunk , pointed cheerily at the exhaust, so hopefully the oil was just a bit more of the crud that had passed through the engine.....Fingers crossed again!
We left the jetty at 9.00 am and passed through an area of virtual darkness the waterway was so overhung with thick vegetation..I was expecting Martin Sheen in olive green panstick to stick his head out of the water at any moment but sadly it never happened!
After only a fairly short way the boat navigated a hard bend to the left and suddenly we found ourself cruising along the left bank of the river herself,at least a mile wide ...We were facing North and upstream, so far so good...Vinh Long here we come!
Alvin who was now alone with us on the boat, (God knows how we were going to offload it) at this point revealed his true character and immediately tried to get us pissed with banana wine from a plastic bottle...very palatable if you think you'd like banana flavoured lighter fuel...he demonstrated the best way to drink it..(fast and without letting it touch the sides) and then pulled out a couple of seats at the front of the boat and left us to soak up the sights. There were hundreds of small metal sheds on barrel floats, dotted along the shallows with bamboo and net "keeps" full of fish. Each had 2 or 3 guys and usually a dog living on it. To get from one to another it was just a case of slipping into the river and swimming across. The river herself was busy with all sizes and descriptions of boats heading upstream, downstream, cross-stream and some just lying there, all of them teeming with people. The time passed incredibly quickly as we sat with our feet up in the prow and watched it all go by.
After about three hours we got the first inkling that all might not be quite as it should be, when Alvin pulled into the shallows on the east of the river (the third time we had crossed as we were going North) and seemed to be getting directions from a couple in a skiff who were eating rice from leaf plates...There was a lot of arm waving, pointing ( in all directions) and laughing...Surely he cant be lost?! He lives on a boat on the river for Christsake! Still smiling, Alvin totters up the boat and starts counting out hours on his watch....It seems the trip is going to take longer than we thought!
We've got a phone number for the girl who hooked us up with the boat so we give her a call and get her to talk to Alvin so she can tell us if there is a problem...after a couple of minutes Alvin, bless him, hands back the phone and the girl tells us " It is no problem, he will find it.....He carries on going straight and then maybe goes either left or right? Do not worry!" Well, I can tell you this did wonders for our confidence.
The ever chirpy Alvin, just shrugged, shook his head and headed out midstream again but from this point on asked virtually every boat we passed for directions....
Obviously Alvin had never been out of Ben Tre waters before, and, when you think about it logically, its not really that surprising...Small boats like his are just used for local ferrying and bank to bank haulage. A trip like the one we were making would be very much the exception to the rule. Anyway, we had paid the best part of $50 US to enjoy a stress free day, leaving all the transport worries to someone else and that someone seemed more lost than we have ever been and was fast getting totally rat-arsed on banana wine..Ho Hum!
Another 4 hours later Alvin squeekily quizzes a young guy in a skiff and gets him to tie up his boat alongside and jump in with us...The wine reappears and it seems we have a guide!
A large town passes by on the west bank which as far as we can tell must be Vinh Long, (unless the earth has changed its orbit as we are definitely still heading North), but Alvin and his chipmunk confidently press ahead and leave the town behind. The guide leaves us soon after, just jumps back into his skiff and floats back downstream, and then some 40 minutes later we pull up to a broken down jetty in the middle of nowhere. A smiling Alvin runs off to see who he can find. We sit and wait.
And wait.
And wait some more.
Wonder of wonders when he does come back it is with an English speaking lady, who explains to him and us after looking at the map and jetty number of where we should have been going, that we have left it some 50 minutes behind...In the town we had seen pass by on the opposite bank.
Even Alvin starts to look a little less than chipper at this point..The poor chap has to get all the way back home after dropping us off and its already been over 8 hours, and, (Vietnam is good at this), some bad weather was coming in fast.
We made the correct jetty in just short of an hour and Alvin again went rushing off, returning almost immediately with a tall Vietnamese guy who spoke brilliant Americanese like a cross between Ho Chi Minh and Neil Diamond!! The four of us had the bike off in less than 5 minutes and Alvin, looking a little emotional ( I think this had been a bit of a "life experience" for him) shook us all madly by the hand before leaping back in his boat and heading off into a very threatening looking evening! I'm sure I saw him reach down for another bottle of banana wine before he was quite out of sight.
The tall Viet guy, Mr Diamond if you like, turned out to work for a tourist company there in Vinh Long and explained how brilliant our boatman had been to get us from Ben Tre to Vinh Long in a day..It seemed that most of the directions he would have been asking for would have related to currents on the river which change according to rainfall and the time of the month, and that if he hadnt been as good as he was that the trip would have taken far longer...Alvin you are the Man!!!!!!
A hotel right on the jetty seemed to fit the bill, so in 10 minutes we were showered and in casual mode. We headed for a bar also on the jetty and sat while the weather really came in....From a clear but greying sky to tumultuous rain and lightning in just a few minutes.....Sat there under bamboo screens with cold beers watching the bats skid over the rain blasted river both of us worried a little for our little drunken pal heading south in the crazy storm!
From here we are going to head southwest to Can Tho where we're planning to stop in the famous ( and frighteningly pricey) Can Tho Victioria for a couple of nights, then by road onto Rach Gia which will mark the end of our journey on the mainland..From there its a 3 hour speed ferry to Phu Quoc island which will be home for a couple of weeks...Have a look-in again soon.

---

Comments

[squirtlet]

Keep the blogs coming
Hello there, only just remembered today to look at your tb. Seems an 'interesting' trip to say the least, we have arrived back in Nigeria having spent a couple of weeks in UK and PMI. Looking forward to reading more blogs soon xx

[StuartandRhianydd]

Hi Tich
I'm struggling to find blogging time what with all the lying about in the sun we are currently doing on Phu Quoc island....Will do my best though. S.