The Mekong Delta

It's more than a week now since we left Cambodia to explore the Mekong Delta, the 'rice bowl' of Vietnam, where, after finding its way from its northernmost source in Tibet, the river meets its southern most point in Vietnam. Once part of the Khmer Kingdom, the Delta is the last part of modern-day Vietnam to be annexed (much to the chagrin of the Cambodians, still disputing its ownership). The alluvial soil from this huge journey means that this is the most fertile rice-growing area in Indo-China, with the soil capable of yielding 4 crops a year, and making its the world's no. 1 regional exporter of rice.
 


Buffaloes on Mekong River

 

Unique Boat Steering?



We decided to book ourselves onto a 4-day organised tour for a change, so that someone else could take care of things for a while. The brochure stated that we would begin with a slowboat trip from Phnom Penh to Chau Doc and, since the boat dock in Phnom Penh was only 150 metres up the road from our hotel, this seemed very convenient indeed. We were duly picked up from our hotel in Phnom Penh at 7.30 am last Monday morning, as promised, expecting the short journey to the boat dock to take around 5 minutes. Oh no! Instead, we spent a full hour in the mini-bus, haphazardly criss-crossing the city, picking up passengers from various hotels, in a bizarrely random way - to the point that we found ourselves back just across from our hotel at 8.30 am, to collect the last passengers! With just a little logistical planning (but then, this IS Cambodia!) we could have had another hour's sleep! Our mini-bus then, to ours and our companions' surprise, set off out of the city in a southerly direction, and it was a further two hours by road - even though we travelled tantalizingly close to the river for most of the journey - before we finally transferred to a rickety-rackety wooden boat, moored in a little muddy creek just a few yards away from the main flow of the river. Our mini-bus driver spoke no English, and so that part of the trip still remains a mystery to us, and to our travelling companions -(mainly Aussies, but also one American and a young Austrian who seems to spend much of his time over here trying to explain to local people that he is NOT an Australian: indeed, he sometimes resorts to wearing a T-shirt, popular amongst his countrymen, simply saying 'Austria - NO KANGAROOS!'.

Once we finally got onto our boat, though, any potential thoughts of mutiny amongst us soon melted away, as we came under the spell of the majestic Mekong and its magical, meandering pace. It was, nevertheless, still a bit of a shock that we reached the Cambodian border after only 30 minutes on the river. (We'd obviously travelled so far south by minibus, that, had we known, we needn't have travelled back up to Phnom Penh from Takeo after all! Oh well...) At the border, we all had to disembark at a kind of ramshackle shanty town which is the Cambodian customs and passport control station and, again, a further 10 minutes down-river, for the Vietnamese equivalent, where we stopped for lunch while the tour guide "cared for the stamping", as it was put to us (sorted out the entry visa authorisations, in other words). Here, we transferred to a much larger and more comfortable boat for a fascinating and enjoyable two-and-a-half hour journey to Chau Doc, where we had a hotel room booked for the night

Entrance to Cambodian Border Post

Ditto Vietnamese


  
 


Entrance to Chau Doc

That evening, the two of us took a couple of motor-bikes, with drivers, to witness a spectacular sunset from the top of Sam Mountain (also known locally as 2-million-dollar-hill, that being the estimated cost of US bombs dropped on that particular landmark alone during the Vietnam War).  



Sam Mountain Sunset



Delta Dancing Queen

After this enjoyable little trip, we were driven back to our hotel for what promised to be a relaxing evening exploring Chau Doc, an interesting, if not particularly attractive border town, and hopefully searching out some interesting street-food. We were therefore a little put out to discover, on returning to our hotel room after the trip, that it was ankle-deep in water! Seems the air-conditioning unit had gone seriously wrong, and, as the hotel was already full, we had to fish out our suitcases (largely, though not completely unscathed), and several bits of sodden clothing and shoes, to put onto a cyclo which transferred our luggage, while we walked alongside, to another hotel a couple of blocks away. By the time we'd sorted ourselves out again, and the original hotel had taken our wet clothes away for drying, almost the whole town was asleep - though we did manage to find one small restaurant still open for business.

Over the next 3 days, we were taken on several boat trips to explore various parts of the Delta - a water-world where boats, houses, fish-farms, factories, timber yards and huge markets float upon the endless rivers, canals and creeks that flow like arteries through this region. By boat, we visited a Cham village (one of many ethnic minority groups in Vietnam, this one Muslim - though, apart from the presence of a Mosque, there was little, to our eyes anyway, obviously different from any other riverside village). We also visited several vast floating markets; a coconut-candy-making factory; a fruit farm where we listened to local folk singing; a fish-farm; and both a rice processing factory and a rice-noodle-making plant - both of which, with their dirt floors, several decades' worth of dust-covered cobwebs over everything, and the dogs, ducks and chickens roaming free, left us a little queasy about our next steamed rice or noodle soup dish! (But it was really delicious! - Ed).



Floating Villages

   

Cham Village



Floating Markets

 

Angry Bird Boat?







 

Vermeer Interior? (Rice Noodle Factory)



Coming to the Six Bells Folk Club - Soon!

At the end of the 4-day tour, we travelled on a very comfortsable coach to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly and still occasionally aka Saigon), about 3 hours' drive away. And all this for just £52 each - including the 3 nights' accommodation, the services of English-speaking guides, all boat and mini-bus trips, 2 breakfasts and 1 lunch! Can't imagine how we'll manage our finances when we get back home in February to UK prices!

On our journey to HCMC, we finally saw the 'idyllic landscape of paddy fields carpeted in dizzying varieties of green' which the Lonely Plant Guide had promised us - until then, it had been mainly fishing-related industries and corrugated-iron shanty town housing along the riverbanks. Shortly before arriving in HCMC, we passed a vast landscaping/construction site, where Michael Jackson's father - obviously still distraught by his son's untimely death - is developing a massive 16-hectare golfing resort, having presumably turfed out lots of local villagers to 'pastures' new. Oh, and when we alighted from our coach in the middle of the City, it was only 50 metres along the road from the pavement restaurant/nightclub where I'd had a little run-in with an over-aggressive bouncer towards the end of last year's trip - not a memory I particularly wanted to invoke!

After a pleasant evening in a really nice (and cheap!) hotel in Saigon, and a comfortable flight therefrom, we're now on the idyllic island of Phu Quoc, where we'll spend Christmas - about which more anon.