Another boat trip - same,same
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Chau Doc, Mekong Delta,
Vietnam
Friday, June 6, 2003
5th June - Time to leave Vietnam unfortunately. We decided to take the scenic route to Cambodia via the Mekong Delta rather than take the cheap bus trip direct to Phnom Penh. We signed up for an organized trip as we only had two days left on our visas. Of course by now we don't really expect to get what we paid for and this was no different although much easier than our entry into Vietnam. It started with a 4 hour bus trip before a very rushed lunch. It was then on to a crocodile farm where the poor old crocs are bred for making handbags in Japan. They had about 10 thousand of the poor little blighters all of varying sizes. The guide tried to explain that if we went into one of the cages the crocs would be scared of us and would run away - yeah right that's why they were snapping away ay the wire fence as we walked past! After this we had a 4 hour boat journey to Chau Doc where we were to spend the night. The Mekong river is so wide at this point that there was very little to see. There was even less to see when we arrived as it was dark. The hotel was nice though and so we ate and went straight to bed.
6th - We left at 7 in the morning for the only bit of the trip that could be considered a tour. This involved us being rowed in a rocky old row boat, by a middle aged women for about an hour. Firstly they showed us the floating village near Chau Doc where the residents make a living from farming fish in cages under their houses. These catfish are far too expensive for the locals to eat and so are all exported, mostly to the USA. Even the houses are all floating they are still on the electricity grid as the girl at the front of boat found out. She was sat at the front facing back down the boat and didn't see the electric cable lying low over the water. I shouted to her at the last moment and she just managed to avoid decapitating herself. Next stop was a Cham village where the people are Muslim and speak Malaysian which is kind of unusual for Vietnam. These people live in houses on the land but because of the flood water they have to build them on stilts 3 metres high. The children here came running up to us asking for pens for school. This made a difference to demands for sweets or money so we went to the local shop and bought a handful of pens to hand out.
From the Cham village we joined a bigger boat to head for the border. After the time it took to get into Vietnam we were amazed at how quickly we were processed when leaving - we didn't even have to leave the boat. A few hundred meters on we came to the Cambodian border where again we were processed quite quickly and didn't even have to hand over any money! We then had a 45 minute boat journey that took 2 and a half hours before boarding a bus for the final stretch into Phnom Penh. We had been warned about the roads in Cambodia and true to form they are atrocious. Much of the journey was over bumpy dusty tracks and the tarmac bits were full of holes. On arrival the bus dropped us at "their" guest house which is always a con so we joined up with some other people to head across town to the riverside in search of something better. We eventually found somewhere cheap enough but that turned out to be the hottest hotel room in the world!
