To begin our journey to Vietnam we first board a 12 seater air conditioned minibus which collects us from Tat guesthouse in Phnom Penh. John and I are the only passengers on board and we chat away with the driver, Doi. Just as we begin to relax and feel that paying that little bit extra was really worthwhile we stop at a busy market and a young man who can shout with a loud voice is invited onboard. We circle the market twice and the guy hangs out of the sliding van door like an eagle, surveying the locals and shouting at our driver to stop at random points to collect more passengers. Fortunately I have a good seat at the front, but I look back and see John squeezed amongst 6 people on his row. As the temporary tout leaves us, another man in a policeman's uniform briefly approaches. Our bus looks a little like a chicken coop bursting with passengers but he turns a blind eye to that and seems to be more concerned that the bus has stopped in a no parking zone. Doi doesn't look concerned at all and simply slips him a small note and the policeman disappears magically.
We rattle along the road through small towns. As we pick up speed, Doi increases the rate at which he blasts his horn, warning children and motos that we are the king of the road and nothing is going to stop us. Nothing does stop us. We speed over potholes which are several meters in diameter and bounce around into the other passengers.
1 hour later we reach a non-descript market town beside the Mekong river. Most of the unofficial passengers make a quick exit, and Doi collects from them a huge wad of notes which he quickly seals in a white envelope and hands to a lady in a nearby house. He drives us to an isolated bamboo shack and tells us that a boat will arrive in 10 minutes to take us to the Vietnamese border and on to Chau Doc. The place looks completely deserted and as Doi drives off in a cloud of dust, I wonder whether a boat will come to collect us.
Sure enough, a boat appears together with a fat lady who is carrying a lemon coloured handbag which is full of Vietnamese Dong. There are no alternatives and the exchange rate of 15000 Dong to the Dollar sounds about right so we change a few small notes to keep us going.
The boat ride down the river reminds me a little of our experience in Laos. The river is wide and there is very little life around its banks. We stop briefly at another small bamboo shack which we discover is Cambodian Immigration and a further 1 km down the river we get to the Vietnamese border.
We already have a Vietnamese visa but all the same, the border crossing takes quite a while. We wait patiently as the fat lady from our boat runs away with our passports to do some official processing. It is midday and although we are hungry we hesitate whether to eat here or not. On our boat we were shown a laminated notice which advised us in big capital letters not to buy any food from the border as it is both costly and riddled with food posioning. Who wrote this and why is unclear and watching passengers from other boats tucking into their grub is excruciatinly painful. We order a plain bread roll to start with and soon after John gives in and orders a safe bet of fried rice with vegetables. Sadly the rice appears cold and the vegetables are not cooked. He's a hungry boy and despite my cries of alarm he still eats everything.
Eventually we receive our passports back bearing a new stamp for Vietnam, the 10th country on our trip around the world. John and I are told to follow a young boy and board a 60 seater passenger boat whilst two westerners board another empty boat. We realise that all the Westerners at the border control are all heading in the opposite direction, to Cambodia, which means that we have the boat all to ourselves. This I guess is one of the little luxuries of travelling off the beaten track although at the same time we feel a little disappointed not to meet any fellow travellers and to share some ideas on places to visit and the details of how to travel around the Mekong. Our driver puts his feet up to steers the boat and the staff soon start to fall asleep whilst John and I start to read a pile of travel notes on the Mekong and plan an itinary.
The view from the boat is a fascinating introduction to the bread basket of Vietnam. The first signs of life are the locals are busy harvesting their rice. We see some men working in the fields, cutting the rice, women separate rice from the husks using the circular sieves and large cargo boats carrying the harvest downriver towards the city. We pass down a narrow stretch of the river and see small villages propped up on stilt sticks. The journey passes by quickly as we are engrossed with the charm of the river. The first major town we reach is our destination, Chau Doc. The boat docs and I balance nervously with my two rucksacs precariously on a moving plank of wood which is only about 10cm in width and which will take me onto the shore.
Chau Doc, where we will stay for 2 days, feels more like a beach resort than a border trading market, with busy streets beside a river promenade. We find some young boys waiting for us as we disembark. John impresses me once more with his quick negotiation to drop the cost of a cyclo (a conventional pushbike pulling a one and a half seater carriage) for only 10,000 Dong (0.6 USD). We race 3km along a mud track towards the market area. Here we check into Thaun Loi hotel nearby the river. It's John's turn to look at the room while I look after the bags. Today he comes back with a huge smile on his face which means that the room is good. The negotiations start once again but today John gives in easily, paying the full price of 6 USD and reeling away that the room is really nice and worth paying a little extra for.
At first sight I cannot understand why John liked this place so much and I am in a grumpy mood. Our makeshift room is sitting 1 storey above the water on stilts and shudders when anyone walks across, or a boat passes. The floor look as though it hasn't been cleaned for months, there is no hot water, lots of soldier ants and the sheets are made of a synthetic sticky material. I soon realise that the saving grace is the view. There are two windows which look out in different directions along the river. From here we see life drifting by. Young boys floating on wooden planks suspended on half inflated inner tube catch fish using thin wires. Women row on wooden boats back and forth ferrying locals across the river to another village. Men bathe in the brown waters. Pretty ladies sell drinks and snacks. Occaisionally brightly coloured cargo boats with two large eyes like owls on their bow cruise past.
After a while I forgive John for taking the room and actually grow to like it. The border crossing to Vietnam only opened to foreigners in 2001 and this part of the Mekong seems untainted by tourism. Our guesthouse is camoflauged with the local surroundings and compared to many of the thousands living on the water, we have the luxury of clean running water and a toilet. In Chau Doc there are no modern concrete towers dominating the river banks, and that is certainly a good thing.
We take a ferry across the river to see where all the locals are heading. It turns out to be a little community wher all the houses are all built on wooden stilts. We sit and sip some freshly squeezed sweet sugar cane juice in a shop and watch life pass by. People here all seem to have boats and we see a couple climbing down from their back bedroom down the wooden sticks and into a wooden boat.
As we return we find a lady who has been waiting patiently for the past hour to give us a unofficial tour in her rowing boat. Locals here are more than happy to guide foreigners around in their boats. This is a fraction of the price of taking an official tour and we feel happier to provide some income to the people that live here, rather than the government run tourist offices. We offer our guide the remains in our combined wallets which comes to just above 1 USD which she accepts and we jump into her narrow wooden boat.
The oars of the boat are crossed over such that the left oar is held with the right hand and vice versa. In a standing position, the lady thrusts the boat forwards using the weight of her whole body against the oars. It seems as though we are hardly moving when we try to make our way against the current and as motor boats pass by, we bob up and down in the wake. I feel drenched with sweat in the 30C heat and I cannot imagine how hot it must feel to be rowing now. There are many ladies rowing across the river and they all seem to look very slim in their brightly coloured trouser suits and conical hats.
We enter a network of quiet water passageways which are filled with floating Khmer style houses. Many Cambodians now live in this part of Vietnam and we spot some turquoise blue wooden houses on stilts with floral patterned bars covering the windows and fish drying in the sun. Nobody seems at all concerned with us peering curiously into their daily lives. One man paints the outside of his boat from the water, another is fishing, another is having a siesta in his hammock and another is going to the toilet. We turn to the direction of childrens' voices shouting 'hello' and see them waving madly and smiling broadly.
We discover that some of the houses farm fish beneath them. We step onboard one house where a small trap door is opened to reveal dark bubbling water. Some small pellets are thrown in, water splashes everywhere are the mouths of huge hungry beasts appear at the water's surface. The owner tells us that there are 300,000 fish kept under this home alone. They are grown from a few centimeters until they reach 40cm, between one and two kilograms in weight. At USD$1 to USD$5 per kilogram dependibng on the season, its big business.
Back on land there are few places to eat unless you like noodles or fruit. We find plenty of places to eat our favourite Pho noodles: rice noodles served in a rich broth together with mint, beansprouts and slices of beef. Behind the glass cabinets we also see lots of animal innards which the locals seem to love, but we decide to avoid. There are plenty of locally grown exotic fruit options and it is difficult for me not to overload. I see durian, mangosteens (the king and queen of fruits respectively), pomelos, long-an, coconuts, sharon fruit, pineapple and even some strawberries. I settle for the long-an fruits which are in season. 1kg of these sweet juicy morsels costs 0.3 USD.
In the late afternoon we catch a cyclo and head out to 'Sam mountain'. The mountain is surrounded by a network of Buddist temples but the view of the surrounding countryside is what interests us. As we begin our trek the sun is already setting although it is still incredibly hot and humid. I stop halfway, drenched in sweat and unable to find the energy or motivation to continue. Down below I can see the flooded paddy fields hugging the Mekong river and in the distance, the mountains of Cambodia. The water is still and reflects a golden orange. 1 hour later I meet John at the bottom of the hill. In a moment of madness he decided to run up to the top to see the sunset over the Mekong Delta and got lost returning in the dark. He tells me though, that it was the best sunset of the whole trip so far.
Back in town we find a brilliant white Catholic church along the river advertising its wares with a neon blue cross in the black sky. This is the first church which we have seen since Bangkok and I am really suprised to find any signs of christianity here of all places. From 1975 to 1986 Vietnam was officially declared atheist under the Marxist-Lenininst communist government and during that time many churches (and pagodas) were closed down with their religious leaders sent for re-education.
The church begins to fill with people so we decide to stay although John soon realises that the men are all sitting on the right hand side of the aisle and quietly shifts over to join them. The ladies side is a little more feminine with feather dusters on each pew which the women use to carefully clean their surrounds. There are several statues of men dressed in chinese suites, western suits and the usual 'holy' suites and on the alter there are some mesmorising flashy neon lights which light up with a spiral effect around the halos of some saints.
It is all a very different experience from back home. We are both suprised to see the church completely full with around 200 people, all wearing their Sunday best. For the first 20 minutes the prayers of the rosary are repeated which reminds me of the Buddist monks chanting their sanscript and sends me deep into meditation. The service is very simple. There are few musical instruments, no hymnn books or bibles available but everyone knows the words and they sing with much love and devotion. I understand very little from the service except a reminder that it is the beginning of Advent but I feel that there is a lot to be learnt from these smiling people who possess a very special spirit.
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