Day 16 -Onto Mekong River
Just following on from yesterday, When the bus picked us up from the New World Saigon hotel, there were actually two groups of us, so two buses. One the blue team which was us, and the gold team had the others.
It’s interesting because there is a group of 40 who have been on another tour with imagine cruising, and they have been travelling all around Vietnam for the last 3 weeks and the river cruise is the last part for them. Whereas our group - and we have only met a few so far, have just arrived and are beginning on the river cruise, then we are all flying onto Singapore for the F1 Grand Prix. So they obviously have a few tours going at the same time – must be a logistical nightmare!
Anyway, the bus trip was interesting – they had said it was an hour but it was actually 2 1/2 hours with a stop towards the end. Ho Chi Minh/Saigon is the most incredibly huge city. It just goes on and on and the traffic is very slow although no one is aggressive at all in their driving. We were crawling for the best part of 1 1/2 hrs, before it started to clear out into the delta a bit more. We arrived and were escorted to the ship – a beautiful French colonial style river boat ship- the Mekong Navigator.
We are in cabin 316, so on the top level for cabins, but even though we paid $1000 extra to be away from the engine (as the travel agent said the company makes it clear that if you’re towards the back, there is engine noise, they have a generator etc), we are still only 3 from the back so a little noisy, but not too bad. Something I will follow up with them. One good thing with this cruise is the captain said most of the travelling will be in the daytime, in between the 2 included excursions each day. The staff are so lovely and they are beautiful cabins with wooden floors and small balconies with railings that are pretty fretwork.
We had our briefing with Linh, our Vietnamese tour guide – she is lovely, but gosh she can talk! We met the rest of the staff and then had a lovely meal. The drinks are all included including a mini bar in our cabin, so everyone tied it on a little bit with drinking! Got back to our cabin and our air-conditioning was still not working properly and I’m thinking omg, I hope it’s not this hot the whole time or I will die, then we realised it had no air coming out at all, so got the room attendant, who got the engineer and he must’ve reset something because it started working well after that thank goodness! Will take a bit to work out the best way to do it with the ceiling fan so we’re not too cold or stuffy.
We woke up this morning, both having been up and down a lot in the night – way too much liquid drunk ha ha! Today we are off to Cai Be, where we will go on long boats and then onto smaller sampan boats – the villagers that are taking us, are all in their 60s and lean as, physically. They put us all on the boats two at a time and used the long oars to paddle up until they got to a certain point and then use them outboard motors as it is hard going against the tide. It was pretty cool in so quiet as we went out.
There was quite a lot of rubbish in the water and apparently the government is just starting to do a push on the environment and recycling, so hopefully in a few years that will see a difference. Then we stopped at a place where some villagers came out in traditional dress and with their instruments and played us folk music, while we had the local fruits and hot tea. One of the instruments sounded like a harp but it was just one long horizontal wire and then an upright wire which she moved back-and-forth plucking it, to get the different sounds.
Trying some of the exotic fruits was really interesting as well. After that, we returned to the boats and they dropped us into town at Cai Be where we came to a cottage factory where the artisans produced rice paper, rice wine and popped rice. There were also things like a pickled cobra snake to flavour the whiskey they produce in the still there😬.
Following that, we returned to the ship and had lunch – gosh it’s like eating courses of a small dinner! We aren’t used to eating 3 meals a day let alone different courses, it is so well prepared and the staff are incredible friendly and eager to please, even though they must go through continuous rotations of western passengers!
We went back to our room like everyone else afterwards and had a laydown, what a treat to do in the middle of the day. Pity when you’re working you can’t do what your body says and do this every day – and still get to sleep at night ha ha!
Then at 3 pm we were out again for another excursion to Sa Dec.it was extremely hot and muggy so I took along my neck fan and we had to cover our shoulders and knees because we’re going to a temple this afternoon. The sampans took us the scenic route through the narrow canals of the Mekong – the villages are like stepping back in time and yet across the water you can see modern city – such a juxtaposition.
We visited a home of a very rich man called Mr Huynh Thuyn Le– He had built a very exotic home with lots of heavy dark wood and gold in-lays. Apparently he inspired a movie called “the lover”. Very interesting - about marrying into money, traditions and there was even a huge wooden bed there in the middle of the house with no mattress and beautiful in-laid shell work, that apparently was his opium bed! Didn’t expect that as he was an upstanding citizen but obviously tradition and culture was different then.
After that we went through the towns markets – they are huge and hot and steamy! The sites, sounds & smells quite something. We were all absolutely dripping in sweat but was good to see apart from the live animals which I didn’t go and see. There was meat and chicken etc, all laying out in the sun – I cannot imagine how much campylobacter there is there that would affect all of us!
Back to the ship and we all jumped in cold showers to cool down and had a little bit of time before going back to a presentation by the tour director about Vietnam – very interesting what the exports are -mainly rice and fruit.
Had a lovely dinner afterwards – we ended up sitting with a couple from Dubbo, although he is from Hamilton New Zealand of all places ha ha right where we spent 40 years! He is a high-end security person who looks after big sports teams, and she is a forensic police officer who goes into crimes scenes and works out what’s happened. Quite an unusual couple, very interesting.
Back up to the cabin to watch an incredible dry lightning storm going on outside it was just constant. There’s been a lot of flooding here and the rivers are very high. A full long day but gosh we have seen some amazing things that are out of our comfort zone but very interesting to see! Three showers today, that’s a first!!
Up at 7 am for breakfast at 7:30 and then ready to get off the boat for the included excursion this morning which is going to mango Island. It’s a small island along the upper Mekong river fairly untouched by tourism and famous for its mango farms. It was definitely a step up in lifestyle for the local Vietnamese, than the previous villages in the small inlets on the delta.
We were taken by remork which is a scooter with a big open trailer for people to sit on, on the back. We zoomed up the road – these ones are tarsealed and even had a line painted down the middle, in places! They took us to a French designed house that was quite beautiful but stark inside. It has to stay in the same family so they have generations that anre basically guardians who look after the house, as each generation passes on. It is quite empty of furniture, but I think they do most things on the floor from what we have seen so far anyway. The man who lives there now is the third generation and apparently he is 70 but he looked so much younger. The Vietnamese do look at at least 10 to 20 years younger than they are, maybe the simple living helps.
Next we went to a place where the family still do the traditional basket weaving. There was the grandmother the mother, niece and granddaughters all doing different parts of the bamboo baskets. Takes a lot of work and you can buy a set of baskets for $3.50 also so very cheap for all the work it takes – we left a donation instead, as it would be a bit of a hassle to take back through customs anyway.
Then we stopped at a big Catholic Church and looked at it outside – it was weird though there was dog poop everywhere in front of it and nobody picks it up and they obviously let their dogs just do it – not sure what the virgin Mary would think about that?! 😬😅
There was an excursion in the afternoon to Long Thuan, but we didn’t go as it was incredibly muggy and hot and from what I heard it was kind of just another village. We stayed back and I got a book out of the library here I’ve started reading and Graeme has bought his own book so it was nice just to chill out. I went walking later on up and down the stairs just to get a bit of exercise, there isn’t a lot of places to walk but it was very nice and I sat and talked to Martina who we have got to know with her husband Richard, they are the Czech people who live in Perth.
Everyone on board seems to have settled into sitting with their shipmates they have befriended and the 4 of us have had some good talks – they are also going to the F1 so we will see them there as well.
Tomorrow we are on the ship all day as we are crossing the border into Cambodia. The Delta continues to be a wide brown waterway with not much in the way of pretty outlook, but is still good to see but nothing like Europe’s views from river cruises!
Day 18 – 2nd October – crossing into Cambodia.
A full day on board the ship today as we are doing 100 km from Vietnam and crossing into Cambodia. It’s a day completely on the ship as they have a lot of distance to cover. We’ve only been doing between 15 and 30 km’s a day before this.
I noticed as we move into Cambodia that it is becoming surprisingly more modern and what we would call proper housing is more evident rather than shacks on the waters edge. There has been a plethora of sand barges everywhere today, digging sand out to use for construction, concrete etc. Apparently the barges just need to get a license and there is not really any other regulation by the sound. The consequences are that they are constantly digging and removing huge amounts of sand from the Mekong river, which in turn is eroding the banks on the sides. You could see evidence of this we are whole lines of the river banks have broken away. Apparently, it will mean the houses and shacks on the water edge will be in the river within 5 years or so, the guide told us. Pretty sad to see there is no ecological or environmental priority put on this?
We had a slightly later start though today being on board all day, so breakfast was from 7:30–9:30. The food here is fantastic and presentation is wonderful as well – we are having to cut back on what we eat as we are feeling the effects– as you do when you first get on a cruise! We have read a lot today – my Danielle Steele book has been an easy way to pass time and we alternated between the very humid heat outside under the sun loungers and umbrellas, and then in the library which is a small room but air-conditioned, and later in our room. It’s funny every time Graeme goes outside his glasses are fogging up but he has developed a swinging action to clear them as quick as possible ha ha ha. 😳😁
We pulled into Phnom Penh an hour early and had a call that because of the earlier arrival we all needed to go straight away to have our face checks done by the Cambodian border control man who came on this morning. He has been writing little visas for everybody by hand all day and then we had to line up and get checked before we are allowed to embark into Cambodia. They charge you US$45 which you have to pay in cash – seems very dodgy! Nothing online available and the cash paying bit, is a bit odd but some people have said Cambodia is corrupt so? It’s looking pretty fancy compared to what we’ve seen in Vietnam, I have to say.
We are docked in quite a flash area for the night and then will be off tomorrow on land tours – it’s great they give you a morning and an afternoon tour included as well as all your drinks and food. We have been having a lot of sparkling water with lime to keep hydration up as it’s so hot outside.
They gave us a presentation on Phnom Penh today, was really interesting how pretty it looks on their presentation and how there are so many temples. We had a really nice cocktail of the evening today, it had vodka, fresh ginger, honey, and lemonade. Was very nice with the honey and ginger especially – that one was an extra cost at 5usd, but was worth it – I had 2!
After dinner we went and paid for the one extra excursion tomorrow night which is taking us through the city on tuk tuks and going up to some high floor of a bar, to lookout over the city and have a drink – that’s $25usd per person so pretty good. We have two included day tours beforehand, so it will be a big day.
After dinner we decided to walk with Martina and Richard down the road to the night markets – these are so placid compared to the chaotic atmosphere in the Ho Chi Minh market and no one asking us ‘ madam, sir, you want buy nice shirt’!Being night, it was a lot cooler as well.
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