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February 26, 2007
The Mekong and Vietnam (Katy)
Another early morning before another long bus ride. After three hours we got off the bus and onto a boat. The boat was small and cramped with lots of people on it .
It was good to be on the Mekong again but the river was so wide by this point that you couldn't really see the sides
After 2 hours on the boat we reached the Cambodian border control. We went through quickly, stamp on your passport and off you go. Back on the boat for another 15mins then off again for the Vietnam border control. This took a little longer. We went through, got our pasports stamped, had our visas checked then, for some reason they collected in all of our passports and said whatever they had to do with them would take about half an hour. We waited in a conveniently situated cafe, and eventually the passports came back. Then it was off to put our bags through the security before getting on another boat. This journey was to take about 2 to 3 hours and would take us to Chou Doc, our final destination for the day. The boat wasn't too bad although it was so noisy, you couldn't speak to each other and we were sitting right next to the engine so it was very hot as well.
When my sandal fell into the engine!!! I thought the day might end in disaster . I had visions of it catching fire and the whole engine going up with it. Luckily we stopped to get fuel shortly afterwards and Joe picked it out for me. There wasn't even a mark on it!!
For most of this journey we were in the delta, on much narrower rivers that all link up together. This was a lot more interesting as you could see much more. Children swim and adults work or prepare food all the way along the river bank. You can really see how the river is the life blood for people here
Eventually we reached Chou Doc. It is essentially a town grown for the docks, but there are also lots of floating houses and house boats on the river around here.
Posted by admins at February 26, 2007 6:54 AM