Mekong delta

Trip Start May 12, 2005
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5
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Trip End Sep 11, 2005


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Saturday, May 21, 2005

I've taken the 'easy' option and booked a three-day boat trip to Ho Chi Min City (Saigon) from Phnom Penh. A small boat took a group of us - English, Irish, Germans, Americans and an Australian - down the Mekong to the Cambodia/ Vietnam border and we duly disembarked to get our passports and visas stamped and swap to a different boat on the Vietnam side. It took over an hour to get our passports back, which was a slight worry, but apart from that was all remarkably hassle-free!

Chugged slowly down the Mekong in the afternoon, with the river - bordered by rice fields, houses on 'stilts' and the odd water buffalo - getting wider and wider, breaking off into different branches, all connected by canals. Easiest way to get about in this part of the world is by boat!

San, our guide, told us about the houses, the typical work of the Mekong delta people - fishing and farming - and taught us a few words in Vietnamese.

Most people booked a hotel in Chau Doc, the first big town we came to, but Aaron, the Australian guy, and I had both booked a 'homestay' trip and got whisked twenty minutes downstream to stay in a family guesthouse on Sam mountain.

In the evening, I walked up the mountain, which is something of a local tourist spot, with several important Buddhist shrines dotted about the mountainside, so there were lots of people about. Everyone was very friendly, smiling and waving at me, with all the children keen to say 'he-llo'. One old man, who spoke no English at all, was very keen to convey to me that we could see all the way to Cambodia - I eventually got the gist.

Sunset over the miles and miles of surrounding rice fields, river delta and canals was quite spectacular.
Cathy
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