Thirty-Three At 33: Size Matters: Mekong Delta

Floating Market: The stick in the air let's passerbys know what this vendor is selling.

When travelling with someone, there’s a point where you click and you begin thinking, saying or feeling the same way about different situations. For mom and me, this happened on our two day Mekong Delta excursion from Vietnam to Cambodia.

Going to the chapel on the Mekong Delta.

Now, Cambodia doesn’t have a train system, so options are limited in terms of getting around. Nevertheless, travelling “overland” is a badge of honor for many backpackers due to the craziness of it and I figured that mom needed to have that experience as least once. So, we opted for the bus/boat option of crossing the border from Vietnam into Cambodia. The added benefit of this option was a two day “cruise” on the Mekong Delta, which included a visit to the floating market, an overnight stay on a floating hotel, dinner, and visit to Chau Doc Village, which is a Muslim community along the border.

We hopped on the bus and quickly learned that size really doesn’t matter in Vietnam; Vietnamese bus drivers are just as clinically insane as the taxi and tuk tuk drivers there. Which means that we spent many hours driving towards the Mekong Delta surrounded by shouts of “Oh my God!”, “Ouch!”, “This is crazy!”, and my personal favorite, which was screamed from the back of the bus to the Vietnamese driver who was in the wrong lane passing four cars around a blind corner - “Look out!”

Once we arrived at one of the Mekong Delta piers, we boarded a slow boat to tour the floating market. The floating market is where farmers sell all of their goods to vendors who then take them into larger cities and towns and sell them to consumers. In Vietnam the floating market is essentially a wholesalers market; however, the Mekong isn’t just a place of business. People live on this river; their houses line the sides of the river or they float along in house boats. They bathe in this river; throw their trash into the river, children swim in this river, and mothers use the water for cooking, which the tour guide said was safe because the water was boiled. I was in awe… The Mekong Delta is a cornucopia of civic utility services (e.g. sewage, commerce, water, transportation, etc.) all rolled up into 15,000 square miles of brown, flowing, nastiness and I was seeing it with my own eyes!

As soon as we got back to the bus, mom broke out the hand sanitizer wipes (exactly what I was thinking) and we rode another few hours towards Chau Doc, where we were sleeping for the remainder of the night in a floating hotel. Mom and I didn’t know what to expect in terms of our accommodations because we booked a package deal through a travel agency and there wasn’t a lot of detail, but when we got there she said, "oh, this is really nice". (Exactly what I was thinking.) The room was large with two queen size beds, air conditioning, and a nice size shower and bathroom. We settled in nicely and twenty minutes later there was a knock on the door. “Um, Madams, sorry but we put you in the wrong room. You’re supposed to be on the other boat.”

The "view" from our hotel window.

We packed up our bags and made our way to the speed boat which took us to another floating hotel. I was behind my mom as she opened the door to our new room and all I had to do was read her body language to know that if she hadn’t been a Minister, she would have spewed forth a litany of curses the likes of Linda Blair in the Exorcist. Size mattered in this instance… Two lumpy twin beds and no AC, but we had mosquito nets, a bucket in the bathroom under the cold hand shower, and a family of geckos that blended in perfectly with the horrific wall paper. Perhaps I also forgot to mention that there were, not one, but three different locks on the door and we were instructed to diligently use all of them.

Mom: “I want to go back to the other hotel! How do we upgrade?” (Exactly what I was thinking.)

Tarantula Liquor - would you like a shot?

We had only ten minutes to get to dinner, so we stashed our stuff, locked all of the locks and decided we would figure it out later. Once at dinner, we met a couple from the U.S. who was living in Canada, but working in Cambodia for the summer and we began chatting it up with them. Dinner, which consisted of vegetables and rice, was served and we kept talking while waiting for our fellow travellers to take a bite. During a lull in the conversation, mom leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I don’t want to eat this if they cooked it with Mekong water.” (Exactly what I was thinking.) Finally someone started eating, they didn't kill over so we all joined in. The other travellers at our table also started ordering copious amounts of alcohol, which I suspected was used like sanitary wipes for their intestines; but the food wasn’t bad at all and we enjoyed our night.

After dinner, we took a walk through the city and decided that we would stick it out in the room we had. It’s only one night, we can do it…

I’m starting to feel like a prima donna while telling you this story and it so does not bode well with the world traveller, She-Ra, I’m every woman, commando persona I’m trying to cultivate and nurture while on the road. This is my mom’s fault! So I’m going to stop right there. I won’t tell you about the rest of the night or how my mom’s pharmaceutical supplies actually came in handy when a Spanish teenager was accidently pushed into the river. I won’t even tell you how a six hour boat trip across the border the next day, turned into eleven hours or how a group of European travellers took out their frustration with the delay on the guide. I’ll will tell you that we made it to Cambodia, none the worse for wear, and when the boat pulled up to the dock at Phnom Penh, there were about 200+ people along the shore doing Zumba!!

I promise you that I cannot make this crap up!