Floating along the Mekong River.....

So the day finally arrived when we had to say goodbye to Vietnam. We've both become strangely attached and neither one of us know what to expect when we arrive in Cambodia. Instead of rushing there, we decided to take a 2 day leisurely boat tour along the Mekong River to take in the last of the very South of Vietnam, the Mekong Delta. It's a maze of waterways and floating villages so we were looking forward to checking it out.

Having been picked up by a cheerful tour guide, we climbed aboard the bus and settled down to a lengthy drive before arriving at a place called Cai Be, where we transferred onto a fairly large wooden boat. I'm still forgetting how much smaller the Vietnamese are and whacked my head on the entrance to the boat - a classic way to start! The guide was very concerned but told me, whilst pointing to my head 'your electronics will be fine its (the boat) only made out of bamboo'! That said, my head still hurt.

After popping some painkillers, I was able to take in the views from the boat. There were many houses on stilts lining the sides of the river, some of which looked in a pretty bad way due to the floods they have just had to endure. In the centre of the river, there was a cluster of boats which formed a floating market (much more organised than the 'floating shop' we came across in Halong Bay! It was mostly fruit and fish on sale, with smaller boats darting between the larger to collect their goods. Many people seemed to be taking it easy on the boats, lying in hammocks and watching the world (or rather tourists) float on by!

We carried on down the river until we came to a local factory I suppose, where they made popped rice and coconut candy. I'm still not entirely sure how the popped rice was made but it was quite a technical process of heating the rice with sugar, sieving it, then rolling it out before cutting it and leaving it to cool. We got to try some freshly made whilst it was still hot - it was suprisingly good so we got some from the shop to munch on for the rest of our journey. The coconut candy was pretty tasty too but got stuck in my teeth way to much for liking so I avoided any more! Tom was very adventurous for ten thirty in the morning and gave the 45% proof rice wine a try - it's not a wonder they call it 'happy juice'. Apparently they only serve it in small shot glasses as it would burn the insides of your nose - nice!!

We piled back onto the boat for an hour long journey along the river before stopping for lunch. It was pretty relaxing chugging along through a maze of waterways that at one point felt as though we were in a jungle. The engine did cut out half way through and was promptly dismantled and fixed in a bizarre sort of way. Turns out, the boat had hit the bottom of the river as the tide was changing, so half the people on the boat got shunted up to the front and pretty much had to sit on top of one another so that the boat could continue on its journey - very cozy! At least we managed to make it to lunch though.

Lunch was included in our tour but was a tiny portion of curry and rice. Fine if you weren't particularly hungry but as usual, we were both starving! Strangely, you could BUY plenty of extra food, including a pretty weird looking Elephant Ear fish, which is a delicacy in this part of the country. The women that eat this fish every day live to be a least 90 years old we were told. Sitting with a German couple at our table, we decided to give the elephant fish a try. It came in a special stand and we had our very own Vietnamese lady to create the rice paper rolls for us(see the pictures on flickr). Pretty tasty!

The boat continued along the river to a place called Vinh Long, where we had to change to a bus for the remainder of our journey to our overnight stop at a floating hotel - exciting! We stopped at a crocodile farm as our rest stop, very weird. They farm the crocodiles for both their meat and skin, both of which they sold here. There were hundreds of crocodiles and most of them were HUGE seriously obese if there is such a thing. They were all just lying there barely able to support their own body weight so there was not chance of them moving anywhere fast from what we saw. Not a great place to wander around but it made what was a pretty boring bus journey just a little bit more exciting.

The floating hotel was generally a bit of a let down. There was a mix up with the rooms, shards of plastic in our beef noodles and pretty scary staff to top it all off! We were both relieved to leave the next day and head off to the Cambodian border. Having upgraded ourselves to the fast boat tickets (I know, check us out!) we were looking forward to a fairly speedy 5 hour journey through both borders to Phnom Penh - oh how wrong we were!!

In actually fact, the first boat we travelling on was pretty speedy. Border control was not. Hardly suprising really when one of them is floating in the middle of the Mekong River! After an hour wait to clear the Vietnamese border, we climbed back onto the boat and quickly arrived at the Cambodian border (on dry land!). During the hottest part of the day, we waited for 2 hours whilst our visa applications were stamped and processed. Painful, considering how many border officials there were. There was some excitment though when a snake slithered across the path in front of us, making one of the Cambodian officials yelp and run away! We took that as a sign to get out of the way too!!

We switched boats after this and began a somewhat slower journey along the river but it gave us a good chance to check out the new country that we were in. Many houses lined the sides of the river and the damage caused by recent flooding was clear to see. Yet the people were so excited to see our boat go past and were stood on the sides of the river waving to us with huge smiles on their faces! So we spent the rest of our journey sat on the roof of our boat, soaking in the suns rays and waving - not bad really!

After such a long journey, we were grateful to roll into the passenger port in Phomn Penh. The city was celebrating a water festival so was jam packed with people and bikes everywhere! We seem to manage to find ourselves in the middle of crazy festivals wherever we go but thankfully it finishes tomorrow so we can explore the city properly.

Much love,
Shell xxxx