Finally on to post 2! We wrote the last entry from the Con Dao island chain. Since then we traveled through four different towns in Vietnam's Mekong Delta region, which makes up the entire southern tip of Vietnam. Its mostly rivers and flood planes as you'll see below, complete with floating markets, river islands and jungles. Then just yesterday we left from Chau Doc via speed boat and after a border crossing and a five hour boat ride ended up in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.
Leaving Con Dao. Oh, and I forgot to mention in the previous post, Lauren almost hit the cutest little puppy anyone's ever seen in the world with our motorbike. To be fair it stumbled out in front of us with its cute little paws all askew, so it wasn't really her fault.
After the plane ride we arrived back in Saigon to hop on a bus and head down to the Mekong Delta region. We met an awesome Vietnamese woman on the bus, Chinh (hi Chinh!) who offered to show us around her home town of Ben Tre. She bought us a few delicious meals and tons of locally made coconut candy.
The next night we took a boat ride to see an island filled with fireflies. We got off there and walked with our guide and boat driver Liem to a family's house where we drank Vietnamese rum with the head of the family (the man on the right). His son-in-law climbed up into a palm tree to drop down fresh coconuts for us to drink. No one in the family spoke English.
The next morning Lauren threw up as we were waiting to leave Ben Tre on a bus to head to Vinh Long. Then we had a beer. I was feeling sick too but, um, in another way common to travelers. We've both been feeling slightly off in the stomach region since then.
From Vinh Long we took a boat to an island called An Binh to stay in a Bungalow there, where we had the best spread of food we've had yet (prepared for just us by the family that owns the Bungalows). On the way to the bungalow we stopped to have a glass of sugar cane juice, fresh squeezed by this woman.
We walked around An Binh and took a few photos.
Another shot from our walk. A storm was coming in.
There were a few buildings where shirtless men were picking these fruits and filling bags with them to be transported to the markets.
The next morning we left our bungalow to take a boat ride around the floating markets of Cai Be.
Our view throughout the boat ride of the massive Mekong River.
Entering the floating market.
A couple transporting lychee to the market.
Our guide then took us for a walk around the Cai Be street market.
Through two trucks on the way to a candy factory.
The candy factory. This woman made us then sheets of some coconut-based substance which hardened into sweet crackers.
They also made giant rice-krispy treats.
And popped rice.
A dragonfruit we bought in the Cai Be market. They taste like a mild Kiwi.
The boat we took to the Cai Be floating market dropped us back off in Vinh Long. From there we hopped on a bus and headed down to the town of Can Tho, the biggest town in the Mekong Delta province. Well, the people we bought the bus tickets from told us we'd be dropped in Can Tho, but we were actually dropped off in a town across the river. We were immediately harassed by a bunch of motorcycle taxi drivers who wanted to charge us $2.50 each to get to Can Tho. We walked about thronged by them and found that we could get on the above ferry for about 2-cents (seriously), so we ditched 'em and took off. This is where we also met our new friend Ignacio, a Spaniard who we have managed to randomly run into every day for the last 4 days, each time in a different city.
The next morning at 6am we took another boat ride starting from Can Tho to tour the largest floating market in the Mekong delta, Cai Ranh. Here are some folks on their boats along the way.
And a pile of buoys. This should give you some idea of the haphazard nature of Vietnam.
Before entering the market we stopped at a soup boat to get some breakfast. The boat with the yellow and green striped top is the soup boat and you can see the back of the old lady who makes the soup.
Entering the floating market. All of these boats are filled with some kind of fruit or meat.
All of the blades are connected to motors by 8 foot poles on each boat and can be dropped in the water to make the boat go. Lauren was afraid of them.
Here's a good view of one of the boats selling fruit.
Our boat driver made us some bling from palm fronds.
We got our swim trunks, and our flippy-floppies.
A woman washing clothes in between houses along the river. Here you can also see some of the trash that the river and waterways are full of. People just throw trash out their back doors and into the water.
Some of the houses. The nicer ones had concrete pillars supporting them. The older looking ones just had cut branches holding them up.
From Can Tho we got on a bus to go to Chau Doc (the port of exit from Vietnam into Cambodia). There wasn't much leg room.
The next day we rented a motorbike in Chau Doc to head to nearby Sam Mountain. We tried to head to a tomb at the base of the mountain but found this group of people when we got there. They were carefully digging around parts of the tomb. Men in business clothes stood around and watched the work of younger guys. We think they were doing a complete restoration of the tomb, and an archaeological dig while they were at it. There were some security guards there that kept kicking out Vietnamese tourists who wanted to watch, but for some reason they let us stay.
They were also chipping away this old black coating from some of the stones.
We left the dig and started walking up the mountain. The bottom half of the mountain is made up of a series of labyrinthine stone staircases and flat stone areas with small temples and pagodas.
There were also some places to relax in hammocks and have a bottle of water on the way up.
This guy was pretty sleepy.
We spotted her in a few different shrines on the way up.
A small shrine. Typical in every home we've seen so far.
Another Buddhist shrine.
Someone's chickens eating their feed on the mountainside.
Being too lazy to walk all the way up we walked back down and then rode our motorbike to the top from the other side. This is what the Mekong Delta region looks like from the peak. You can see Cambodia in the distance.
Back at the hotel we wanted to get a shot of the traffic we had just been driving our motorbike in. You just slow down at intersections (well, some people slow down) and nose your way through while rapidly honking your horn.
Finally, we left Vietnam on a speed boat and entered Cambodia. We got to Phnom Penh (the capital), got a room, and then headed to this building. There was massive genocide in Cambodia due to a communist revolution from '75 to '79, wherein one fourth of the entire population was killed. This building was a high school until the Khmer Rouge took it over and made it into a prison and torture chamber where they killed somewhere around 18000 people (anyone they thought might be against the revolution). Inside now is a museum and memorial to those who were killed.
A translated set of rules that was found in the prison after Vietnam liberated Cambodia in '79.
The first floor of one of the buildings is filled with pictures (taken by the prison guards) of each of the prisoners. All of these people were killed.
The pictures go on and on. Unfortunately the camera battery died. One of the last rooms in the museum contains a few skulls that were used for autopsies a few years ago to prove some of the atrocities that occurred in Cambodia. The skulls were cracked from being bludgeoned or hit with sharp edges, some had bullet holes. It wasn't until 2008 that some of the leaders of the Khmer Rouge were convicted of war crimes.
And on a lighter note, we are sitting in an internet cafe across from this palace, to be explored tomorrow morning!
Another market. Cows?
The beach outside our room. Tons of boats hang out here amongst the islands. They were waiting out a storm when we arrived.
Us on our motorbike. Sorry moms.
We made soup in our teapot. They have Pho soup packaged like Ramen!