Slow Boat to Cambodia

We took a slow boat to Cambodia. 8 hours-ish, of riding along the Mekong River from the border town of Chau Doc, Vietnam to Phenom Penh, Cambodia. We got there, eventually. A lot of things happened in between dock below and setting foot in the capital.


This is the dock where our international boat was departing from.

Mekong River. Most of the Mekong looked like this for the 8 hours we were on the boat.

The vessel. We left the dock without anyone but the boat driver and the man who insisted he take our passports. We refused, because we didn't know why he wanted them and he was a stranger. More on that in a minute. A half an hour into the boat ride, we picked up some tourists who were taking an early morning boat ride along the river.

We arrived at the border town of Vietnam and Cambodia. Here, all of the passengers were ordered, by the sketchy no named man who previously wanted to take our passports, to sit and wait for one hour. Above is the Cambodian animal quarantine area. Some kids were playing outside with dogs.

Here is the man who wanted our passports. We are pulling up to the Cambodian border.

After waiting one hour at some overpriced fried spring roll "restaurant"with the rest of the passengers, we were instructed to walk overland to get our passports stamped for Cambodia.
Everyone passed through but us. Apparently the reason the man wanted our passports was because he was going to get an exit stamp for us. There was a big controversy, and frankly we are too tired to write about it right now. Ask us about it when we get back. We got across the border eventually.

There's Kara, happy to be on the new Cambodian boat without any futher issues.

And there is Igor, our Slovenian friend. Not Slovak, but close enough when you're traveling in Cambodia.

Max discovered the top of the boat. He played games with this kid. We applied lots of sunscreen and watched the sun move throughout the day over the Mekong.

Sleeping on top of boat, 20 minutes to the port at Phenom Penh.

Leaving Vietnam via the Rice Bowl

When we read that the Mekong Delta was "Vietnam's Rice Bowl," we wondered what that made the rest of the country. After traveling the whole length of the country, we had not seen a single province without an abundance of rice fields. But apparently we hadn't seen anything yet. The Mekong Delta is a series of rivers broken up by small patches of land and lots of space that is neither river nor shore. People live on all parts of the Mekong: on boats, barges, and houses. We spent a few days exploring two provinces of the Mekong before taking the slow boat up the river to Cambodia. Our first experience in the Mekong was in Can Tho, which is the region's largest city and is home to approximately 2 million people. We visited the floating markets of Can Tho before heading up to the border town of Chau Doc.


Sunrise on the Mekong. Worth waking up at 4:30 in the morning to experience the light on the water. Before we even saw the water, we were approached by a little old woman offering her boat for hire to visit the famous floating markets and cruise down the river. We spent 8 hours on the water, floating past the every day life of the people who live on the sprawling Delta.

Max.

People buying coconuts from the coconut boat.

Kara.

Between markets our enthusiastic boat driver pulled up to a small island and led us to a barn where they make rice noodles. She stopped along the way to pick flowers for us.

Kara shooting.

Rice soaks in water for several hours, turning it into a white paste.

Here the paste is spread over metal steamers.

The rice pancake is laid on racks of straw and bamboo to dry before being cut into rice noodles.

Another floating market.

The floating markets consist mostly of boats this size filled with various produce.

Typically the boats sell one item per boat. We stopped at the banana boat and the dragonfruit boat. We saw a duck boat next to us, selling live fowl by the kilo.

Kara looking dorky while steering the boat. Max doesn't endorse the use of the word "dorky" to describe Kara.

Really? Not dorky? Kara in between shots, getting her game face on.

The next day we took a bus to Chau Doc, a border town 2 kilometers from Cambodia. Upon arriving, we went up to Sam Mountain to get a better look at our new surroundings. Our motor bike got a flat on the way back.

Sam Mountain. Lots of locals come up here regularly to watch the sunset as well as tourists. Many pagodas can be found on this mountain as well. Although the tallest thing for miles, it is really more of a tall hill. It still gives a commanding view of the Mekong and we were able to see the border of Cambodia from here.

At the base of Sam Mountain is the international sculpture garden. It was also conveniently located across the street from our favorite vegetarian restaurant in town.

Last Day in Vietnam:

This road divides Cambodia and Vietnam. People lay their rice out to dry on the road. Everyone just drives over it. When in Rome....

Ducks. These were the cleanest ducks we saw all day.

Vietnamese countryside. Strikingly beautiful. Rice paddies for miles in more shades of green then we thought existed.

Rice piles. The straw is gathered around a central wooden pole and is stored outside in these piles.

Dirty ducks. We saw lots of these.

We had heard about the Khmer Rouge invasion of Vietnam and a monument to the victims in a nearby town. We searched for it for a long time without success. When a girl stopped us on the side of the street and asked if she could practice her English with Kara, we asked her if she knew of the "Khmer Rouge Skull Glass House" and she took us there.

Inside the small museum to the "Skull Glass House," we learned about the 1978 massacre of over 3,000 Vietnamese civilians by the Khmer Rouge. The killings happened over the course of two weeks. When we asked our new friend why this happened, she said she really didn't know. We really don't know either; we want to know more about this.

Graphic content.

"The Skull Glass House" is a monument that holds the skulls and bones of some of the people killed in the massacre.

They are arranged by age and gender, from under 2 years old to over 70.

Pagodas surround the monument. In one of them we found an altar to Ho Chi Minh. Kara says, "Yikes". Max thinks this is just as creepy as any other Ho Chi Minh personality worship.

More countryside.

We found this Buddha on top of an actual mountain late in the day. We had heard about it and had to pass through some bullshit authorities to get there. A motobike driver was trying to tell us that we needed to get off our motorbike so that he could drive us up there himself. He followed us a quarter up the mountain before realizing we weren't getting off and the real police didn't care if we were on our own.

This Buddha is massive. 30 meters tall to be exact. Birds fly through his nose and gigantic belly button.

Last look at the Cambodian border before crossing. Cambodia starts where the green rice paddies end and the water begins (right).

We learned a lot here and came to love this country. Its beautiful landscapes, relaxing beaches, historical significance and plentiful vegetarian food will be missed. Goodbye Vietnam.

HCMC: The Metropolis Formerly Known as Saigon.

Ho Chi Minh City is a sprawling Asian city covering some former marshland, lots of colonial architecture and more churches than anywhere else we have seen on our trip so far. We ended up spending more time here than we thought we would. It was a good jumping off point for some day trips, including the Cu Chi Tunnels. It was also a good place for us to search for a bootlegged "the Wire" DVD set, seasons 1-5. No success. However we were able to get Cambodian Visas and Indonesian Visas in a 24 hour time period. We also spent two days on a motorbike mapping the city for Vegetarian Restaurants. We found over 30. We stayed in a backpacker ghetto on Pham Ngu Lao, which is Kara's new favorite word. It's kind of a seedy city with power outages, sections that flood during the full moon, and lots of visible prostitution.

Ancester worship time, we think. Many people burn offerings in the late afternoon right outside of their shops or on the street. We saw lots of shops selling fake hundred dollar bills in Hanoi; now we know they aren't to play Monopoly with.

Cu Chi Tunnels:

A vast network comprised of over 200 kilometers of tunnels. They are located 70 kilometers North of HCMC. Unlike the Vinh Moc tunnels of the North, the older Cu Chi Tunnels were much smaller (average height 1.5 meters) and mainly planned for military purposes. As many as 5,000 people at a time hid out for up to three months in these crawl spaces. It was a base of resistance for both the French and American wars and was severly bombed on account of this. When bombing didn't work, American troops tried to flush out the NVA in hand to hand combat but were met with booby traps and a vast maze of which they were unfamiliar. Some of these booby traps were quite brutal and focused on impaling soldier with metal spikes by various means.
Side note, this 70 kilometer ride took us approximately 3 hours to find. Thirty minutes of that was through the rain on a motorbike. We arrived at the museum 45 minutes before it closed. We still got a tour.

1-3: Our guide desends into a secret entrance to the Cu Chi Tunnels. He was way too smiley and made jokes throughout the tour. This weirded us out, but is not uncommon while visiting war ravaged areas of Vietnam. In this series of photos, he jumped into the hole and demanded that Kara take a picture of him as he went up and down through the small portal.

Booby trap. Guide: "Door [See-saw] covers spikes, cover door with anything, soldier steps on door, what you think happen?"

After Cu Chi we spent the rest of our time on our previously mentioned vegetarian restaurant scavenger hunt as well as taking some time to explore the city.

Typical street in HCMC. Max was the courageous driver. Kara was the courageous passenger.

More glimpses of Ho Chi Minh City:










Off to the Mekong Delta and into Cambodia....

Kara and Maximilian