The Mighty Mekong Delta

Hey Guys,

So Jared has filled you in on everything up to and including Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia. Early on our last morning there we boarded a boat bound for Vietnam by river crossing. We probably could have taken a bus for cheaper but wanted the experience of cruising over an international border by water. Which brings us to the first part of the day. After a couple hours we were at the Cambodian border office, so we climbed out of the boat, got our passports stamped and back in the boat. 5 minutes later we're at the Vietnamese border office. Remember when we crossed into Cambodia from Thailand? Well, new border, same scams. Our tour guide ( and I use this term lightly) was collecting passports, Jared looked at me- suspicious of a scam. When he came to us I just asked "what is this for?" He hurriedly just said, 'go in there' motioning towards the sitting room and stopped trying to take our passports. Basically just wanted to get us out of the way so he could keep collecting all the other tourists passports on our boat. Jared had read that this is one of their tricks; they take your passport, run it to the stamping office themselves (although you could totally do this yourself as it's literally the next door over) and then when you want your passport back you have to pay $5. Now $5 doesn't seem like much to us but in this part of the world it is the daily wage for many. So as a result the quasi-legal jobs as tour guides over the borders are very coveted. We ended up waiting in the sitting room for a bit watching really bad Asian tv and then he came back asking us why we hadn't got our passports stamped in yet. Umm, I don't know maybe because you motioned us into the sitting room, because your skills as a guide are severely lacking, or you are trying to prove a point because we wouldn't let you scam us......all of the above? So he gruffly pointed us to the stamping room where this little Vietnamese guy was on autopilot stamping passports like crazy. He stamped ours, scanned them, and off we went. No hiccups with the Visa either, yippee! What's really crazy about this system is that he would be stamping all day, hardly seeing any of the people he's letting into the country. Also, there were nationalities of passports on the desk that weren't on our boat- who do these orphan passports belong to?!? One of the best rules you can live by while traveling is to keep your passport with you...ALWAYS! Seems like common sense but it's funny how you forget this stuff, especially when your tour guide you are supposed to trust tells you something else. Basically I've come to the realization you can be friendly to everyone here while simultaneously trusting no one. Except Jared. I mostly trust him.

Ok so we're back on the boat and all goes smooth all the way to Chau Doc- our first travel stop in Vietnam! This is the first part of our 2 day exploration of the Mekong Delta- 'The Rice Basket of Vietnam.' This is a rather aquatic kind of place, I think the Mekong River branches into 9 rivers that feed out into the sea, so it's full of people making their livelihood off the river, flooded rice paddies, floating markets, etc. Plus all the settlements on dry land- so lots going on. We are learning there is really no such thing as South East Asian countryside in the way we think about it, there are just smaller towns with rice fields squeezed between. That night we went seeking some cheap, authentic food as we pretty much do every night. I had written a list of Vietnamese dishes with translations and I was trying to feverishly make sense of all the food stalls with their dish names written on the front glass. I recognized 'hu tieu' which is basically a thicker type of rice noodle, so we sat down. The people here were super nice, didn't speak a lick of English but after some finger pointing I thought we had ordered two bowls of noodles with beef dumplings. A lady even gave up her seat so we could sit down! We get our food and there is a hunk of meat with the bone still one, I think it was chicken? Some slices of pork, the beef dumplings and to top it off a nice slice of liver on top, all in a soup. No, we didn't eat the liver, but ate everything else until we were stuffed. The lady that gave up her seat was even trying to teach us how to properly eat the noodle soup, there is actually a protocol with the spoon, chopsticks, a small bowl of soy sauce, etc. I think we failed miserably. So we will just chalk that one up to an adventure.

We boarded a bus the next morning for Can Tho, seeing a few things on the way. A fish farm- that basically consists of a floating house with a net underneath and a hole in the floor to get at the fish. We visited a Cham village and watched the ladies weave silk on the loom. The bus took us to Sam Mountanside, a temple built on a hill and when you went inside the temple you could enter into man made caves and wind through to see more shrines. The views over the countryside were pretty.

"Rice Field Green"

 

After all this we took a bus to Can Tho, where our home stay was. Home stays are basically where you stay with a local family and have supper with them. We had to ride on the backs of scooters out there, I was shit scared.

All this on the back of a scooter?!? In the end it was all good, made it there rather uneventfully.

Spring rolls frying for supper that night at the homestay

The next morning we took an early morning boat cruise to the Cai Raing floating market. We ate breakfast on the boat as the sun was rising- just magic.

The floating market is a really cool concept, people live on large boats on a wide part of the river, each one full of one item- garlic, cassava, melon, etc. They live out on the river permanently, even though there is dry land and city right there. Then smaller boats come to buy all the goods they need and bring them back to sell their wares in their home villages.

That afternoon we saw how rice noodles are made. Basically they grind up rice, add tapioca flour and water and then spread that paste on a hot, flat circular pan kind of like cooking a crepe. That is dried out in the sun and then sliced like paper through a shredder. It was sooooo neat!

Rice heading out

Off to dry in the sun

The shredder of rice noodles

We took a walk through the land market, lots of fish, frogs, vegetables, hunks of meat. I just love the craziness of Asian markets. However, it's hard for us Westerners to see the chopped up hunks of meat just basking in the sun, the frogs tied up by elastics, etc. It's a bit of a culture shock.

We arrived that night by bus to Saigon/ Ho Chi Minh City. Tet or "Lunar New Year" is coming up and it's the party of the year for the Vietnamese. It's a combination of Christmas, New Years, and everyone's birthdays all rolled into one party. The dates change every year but the zenith this year is February 18th. As we learned travelling through Vietnam- "Tet" basically continues on for a while after that yet. Stores close, buses are full and the locals get day drunk for days straight. Fun times!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Phnom Penh

From Battambang, we decided to take the cheap bus to Phnom Penh. Bad idea. Here's a quick synopsis: we were the only tourists on the bus. The air conditioning was broken and it was very hot. The bus trip was supposed to be 5 hours and it took 9 hours. The aisle was packed with people and goods so you could not move around. They were blaring some of the worst possible music on old crackling speakers. Suffice to say, we were quite happy to get off the bus in Phnom Penh to say the least.

Valentine's dinner

We ended up spending 4 days in Phnom Penh because we had to wait until Feb 15th to get into Vietnam. One of the days we hired a tuk tuk driver to take us around to various places around the city. Our first stop was at the National Museum where they have a bunch of the original carvings from around Siem Reap (Angkor Wat). They had brought them here originally because people were stealing them to sell on the black market.

 

****Warning**** The rest of the blog is not for the faint at heart.

Our next 2 stops involved the Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia. In North America, we don't hear very much about the genocide that took place in Cambodia in the 70s, so I'll give you a brief description. In 1975, the Khmer Rouge (Red Khmers) took over the country by force. Their leader's name was Pol Pot. Like many countries around the world, many Cambodians had moved from rural areas to urban areas to try and make a living. But the Khmer Rouge wanted to have a country full of farmers and non-educated people. Anyone who apposed this idea or spoke up was killed on the spot or tortured and killed. Then their whole family was killed, so there wouldn't be anyone who seeked revenge. Schools were shut down and some were turned into prisons. They accused people of fake crimes like being involved with the CIA or KGB and tortured them until they confessed. They forced people to work like slaves for nothing and would only feed them a few kernels of rice, so many people starved. The numbers vary but it is thought that 3 million of the 8 million Cambodians living at the time were killed! Just terrible stuff. No foreign media was allowed and nobody was permitted in or out of the country. The borders were covered in land mines to deter people from fleeing.

The first of the two stops was Tuol Sleng museum. It had been a school before the Khmer Rouge and was turned into a prison. We listened to a guide as we walked through as he described the living conditions, the torture that occurred, and the many executions. Quite a sad place. I can't even imagine how horrible it must have been.

 

Carvings of Pol Pot

 

Our next stop was just outside of Phnom Penh at one of the many killing fields that was used by the Khmer Rouge. There was a very informative audio tour with head phones as we walked around that told the story. Almost all people killed did not know that they were going to their death as they had been told that they were going to be moved. Most of the buildings that were there during the operation were ripped down and used by the farmers in the area after the Khmer Rouge were ousted by the Vietnamese army in 1979.

Sites of Mass Graves

 

There was mass graves with bones still sticking out of the ground. In the center, there was a memorial to all the people that had been killed that contained over 9000 skulls held in a glass casing.

 

At the end of the day we were left emotionally drained and wondering how the human race can do these things to each other. The Cambodians themselves were very open about it all and were not afraid to tell their personal accounts of the time. It was very different to what I expected.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Battambang

Hey folks,

In the last blog Roberta talked about out tours of the temples around Siem Reap including the most famous Angkor Wat. What she failed to mention was how obsessed and full on geek mode she went into. For those of you who know her quite well, you know that when she gets into something she enjoys that she goes full bore. The temples were no exception. She ended up buying a book about the temples from one of the many kids trying to sell stuff and then had to read about every statue and carving as we went along! So after 3 days of slugging through the heat to see as many temples as we could with Roberta cracking the whip, I was ready to move on. Don't get me wrong they were very amazing but we are on vacation aren't we?!?! Haha I may be exaggerating a bit. Love you Hun.

The Lonely Planet said that the boat ride to Battambang was not to be missed, so we decided that's where we would head next. It had also said the journey can take anywhere from 5-8 hours depending on if it's the wet or dry season and we ended up finding out why it said that further on in the trip.

We bought our tickets from the guesthouse we were staying at and were told to be up and waiting at 6 am to get picked up and delivered to the boat which would leave at 7 am. So we did as we were told and in true Cambodian fashion the bus picked us up at 7:30 am. We were taken to one spot where a bunch of other travellers were waiting. After a few minutes another smaller bus showed up and we were packed in there like sardines. One guy lost it because he was too squished and was yelling at the bus driver and the helpers. Most was lost in translation so eventually the guy just got off the bus never to be seen again. This all happened before the wheels even started turning. The rest of us went on laughing. Some people expect things to run as they do in the Western world and that will get you no where over here.

We jumped on the boat with about 40 other people and started off. We headed through some canals to start with and then across Tonle Sap Lake. After a couple hours, we started heading down a river that was the home to thousands living in floating homes. These floating towns had schools, restaurants, post offices, and other things we would normally see in our towns.

School

 

Since they live on the river, it wasn't surprising that life centered around fishing. Longtail boats ripped around with all sizes of fish and nets within. Small fish that we would normally throw back in the water were caught in nets by the thousands. Sounds of people chopping up these small fish waxed and waned as we moved along. Many of the kids would stop what they were doing wave and yell hi as we moved past.

 

As we went the river got smaller and smaller and eventually we were down to a crawl as the boat navigated it's way around. Just when you thought there is no way that this river can get any smaller with the boat we were on, it would. And that's when we started getting hung up. We couldn't make the turns with our long boat and they were using a pole to push us off the banks.

There were many crocodile farms as well. These cages were full of crocs.

Fishing nets

 

The first time we had to jump off the boat and push it was quite a surprise that the water was only just above my knees. We all know that I have been gifted with the Watson legs, so it was very shallow. Meanwhile we are on quite a large boat in the middle of nowhere! In total we had to push 6-7 times. There were certainly times when I didn't think that we would get going again, but we succeeded. There is no way that the boat would keep taking that route in those conditions back in Canada, but we encounter things like that daily here. It's all a part of the Asia experience.

 

The next day we slept in and when touring around on a tuk tuk after lunch. Our first stop was at the bamboo train. The "train" was a small bamboo platform with train wheels on it which was run by a small engine. We cruised for around 20 mins down the warped tracks to the next station. We didn't feel like getting hassled there by all different people to buy things, so we just sat down in the first place and had a beer. The older lady there then tried to teach us Khmer (Cambodian language) which resulted in a lot of laughs. We then cruised back to the first station.

 

Our tuk tuk then took us to out to the bottom of a large rocky hill where we climbed to the top to check out a temple. There was also a few caves to explore. One of the caves was a memorial to the people killed by the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s. There was many human skulls there which was kind of weird to see. I'll talk more about the Khmer Rouge in the next blog.

After that we descended back down the hill to watch millions of bats emerge from a cave. There was a steady stream coming from the cave for 30 minutes. It was quite amazing. As we made our way back to Battambang, we could still see them kilometres away looking like black ribbons in the sky.

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCx0TW4z6Sz7GLyNTHnt-6WQ

Posted with Blogsy