Through The Mekong Delta To Cambodia

We took a bus to Can Tho on Sunday morning. This involved a taxi to the bus company office, then a shuttle to the bus. They made an announcemnet that the shuttle had arrived but it was only in Vietnamese. By the time we checked it was our shuttle it was already full. So a local, and the two of us sat on little plastic stools in the aisle. The things you do when travelling that you wouldn’t do at home. Once at the bus station we boarded our bus, which was a sleeper bus, so was very comfortable. At the door we had to remove our footwear and place them in a provided plastic bag to take to our seats.

The ride was fine, with the usual mad driving. We made a stop at a very large food court/souvenir place. It was in a building which was about the size of two football fields. We weren’t sure how long we were stopping for but managed to get back to the bus as it was loading up again. From there we continued onwards until we crossed the Hau river, the larger branch of the Mekong river, and we were there. A taxi took us to our hotel, which we had booked online at a pretty good price, certainly cheaper than a hotel of that standard normally would be.

The taxi dropped us at one entrance, and when we went out to lunch we used the other exit. This took us out onto a street that is basically a market, and is closed to cars between 0600 and 1800. That was interesting, in a smelly kind of way. After lunch we returned to the hotel for a swim in the rooftop pool.

Later on we went for a walk along the riverfront on the nice promenade. We saw the large statue of Ho Chi Minh, watched the river traffic, spoke to some local teens who wanted to practice their english, and when they turned on the decorative lights we enjoyed the views of that too. We could see it was going to rain so we had dinner then headed back to the hotel, getting rained on along the way, but not too badly.

It was a disgracefully early start the next morning. We were picked up from our hotel at 0550 by our guide. She walked us for two minutes to the river where we boarded our small boat. The woman driver of the boat started it up and we were off to the market. Can Tho is famous for its floating markets, and we were going to see the Cai Rang market, where boats come down the river loaded with produce bought from farmers to sell to locals who then onsell it at the market.

The traders and their families live on the boats and spend their lives travelling up and down the river buying and selling. It made for quite a scene. Of course, the market has spawned side industries like selling breakfast to the traders and the many tourists. It was from one of the more popular breakfast boats that we got our breakfast of noodle soup. Not a favourite with Kiwi, but Kraut enjoyed it.

After watching the goings on for a while we headed up a small side creek to visit a rice noodle factory. This was a small family enterprise, and we were allowed to roll the large circles of flat rice off the heat and then roll them on to the drying racks. They were another lovely Vietnamese family. The people in Vietnam struck us with their friendliness.

Then it was time to head back to the hotel. We had time to shower and change before getting picked up by a van which took us back to the bus station where we caught our bus to Chau Doc. This was an ordinary bus, but quite comfortable. The ride was dissappointing, as although we followed the river the whole way we only got brief glimpses due to the riverside being built up all the way. Once in Chau Doc we were driven to our guesthouse in another van. Door to door service, nice.

The guesthouse was nice, and owned by a Kiwi, Wayne, and his Vietnamese wife. Wayne has had an interesting life and we enjoyed talking to him about his experiences in various strife torn parts to the world, and also his perspective of Vietnam. We didn’t do much with the rest of the day, but Kiwi did manage to go for a walk to see what was going on by the river. Not a great deal, as it turned out, but he met some locals and enjoyed the walk. We had dinner at a local restaurant.

Another early start was required on Tuesday; breakfast at 0600, and at 0700 picked up by a couple of guys on cyclos (a cyclos is a bicycles towing a trailer) who took us to the boat. We were on our way to Cambodia. The boat was a long and narrow and seated about 25. The boat was full, mostly with a Dutch tour group. Being in the boat was like being in a small passenger plane; two seats either side of a narrow aisle, and a similar level of noise as the engine pushed us along at a decent speed.

We stopped at a large pontoon, which was the Vietnamese Immigration office. We all had to disembark to go through the formalities of leaving Vietnam. However, we had paid a small premium on the price of visas so the guy with the boat took care of it for us, we just had to fill in the paperwork for entering Cambodia. Having officially exited Vietnam, two days before our visas expired, we got back on the boat and headed a bit further before stopping on the riverbank at Cambodian immigration.

We had to have our photos and fingerprints taken, but everything else was taken of. Then it was back on the boat for about 3½ hours. It wasn’t overly exciting, but we saw some interesting things along the river. As we approached Phnom Penh we could see some large construction projects, mostly Chinese money apparently. We counted over 20 cranes.

Once at our dock we exited the boat and, ignoring the pleas of the tuk tuk drivers (especially the one who told us our guesthouse was a long way away), walked the two hundred metres to our guesthouse. Thus endeth our travels in Vietnam, and beginith a new chapter in Cambodia.

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If anyone has any questions about travelling in Taiwan or Vietnam, feel free to contact us at thekiwiandthekraut@gmail.com