Sorry about the previous Mekong posts. I had a computer glitch and ended up with posts that didn't work!
We decided to leave Cambodia by boat to get to Vietnam. We were a bit intimidated by Vietnam because everyone we met who came from there said it was very hectic and the traffic was hard to get used to. We thought we would ease ourselves into it by taking a four day tour that ended in Saigon.
Most of the images here were taken on the first couple of days. Philip caught the man riding his bike on the shore in the first picture, great isn't it? We were on a wooden boat with about 35 people just putt putting along. The first picture of us was taken by a Japanese tourist and the second one was taken of us with a lovely Korean family we made friends with. The girls are so beautiful. They were so happy to meet us because they are going to immigrate to Canada in the next few years. The parents could both speak English well and could understand us if we spoke slowly.
The other pictures were all taken from the boat. The river was extremely busy with fishing and all kinds of commerce. As you may have noticed the painted boats all had eyes painted on the front to ward of evil spirits!
I gotta say that all of the stuff we heard was true and then some. The first town we spent the night in was total chaos! The number of motorbikes, cyclo cabs and bicycles on the roads were beyond imagining! There were no traffic lights and somehow traffic flowed through intersections without incident. To cross the road you hold your breath and step off the curb while trying to make eye contact with some of the drivers coming toward you and hope for the best. It feels like a miracle when you reach the other side.
The smells and sounds and activity on the streets hit all of your senses at once and you can't help but feel you are in a different world. It immediately feels like a different culture in Vietnam. I read somewhere that its ironic that the Vietnamese have a communist government because they seem to be born with an entreprenurial ( sp?) gene. Everyone is doing business everywhere!
The tour we were on was poorly organized and we had to be on our toes just to keep from being left behind! We visited a rice noodle factory, lots of floating markets, a family that made coconut candy and also had a python, a folk music concert and took a ride on a small canoe type boat through a jungle waterway. That was very peaceful and etherial.
After three days the tour guide said we were going to be left in a hotel as we were the only ones on a four day tour and we would join a new group the next day. A taxi took us to a hotel that was really bad. It was so grotty that we found a movie theatre and went out for the evening. The movie theatre wasn't much cleaner and we were the only people there! We couldn't find anything we recognized to eat so we were also kind of hungry. The room barely locked and the bathroom was kind of in the room. The sink was over overlapping the toilet a little and had no drain pipe. The water just dropped to a drain in the floor and everytime anything went down it, it stunk to high heaven. We had to brush our teeth in the toilet. Every now and again you get stuck like this but in the end it's an experience. The great thing was that the hotel was across froma park on the river and we noticed folks taking a ferry across. We went across with motorbikes and folks going home after a days work. On the other side it was fantastic. A small cement lane with the houses and stores right on the lane. The people were in the lane relaxing and making supper and they were super friendly to us. Smiling and waving. We were literally a few feet from the insides of their houses. The kids are always curious and often try to converse or play in some way. They all know how to say hi but if you say anything else they giggle and laugh and don't have a clue what you're saying. They are so charming!
It was a bit of a relief to find such friendly people because our first impression was of people being quite cool.
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