Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Mekong Boat Tour - Chau Doc

The Mekong boat tour was about the same as all the other boat tours I've been on so far: 20 people crammed on to a slow, puttering vessel observing the scenery, reading, etc. The first half (the Cambodian side) was pretty standard, then we stopped for lunch and immigration and a quick meal before getting on another boat on the Vietnam side. This boat had a really nice and friendly guide named San. Clint started chatting with her and by the end of the boat trip and arrival in Chau Doc San had invited us out for Karaoke later that night.

We checked into a great, clean, comfortable room that was included in our 'tour package' but otherwise $6/night...probably the best room I'd stayed in during my time in SE Asia up to that point, certainly for $6. We caught a rickshaw driver to take us to a local Pho noodle soup place, where for $1 each we got a big bowl of beef noodle soup(it would turn out to be one of the best I had in Vietnam) plus a Coke. Not too shabby.

After dinner we hooked up with San and a Danish couple also from the boat and we went to the house of two kids that San is tutoring in English and we all practiced English together. From there we headed to Karaoke. We got a private room with our own Karaoke system and San and her brother lead off with Vietnamese song. It took me a while to get up the nerve but I finally decided to give 'Benny and the Jets' a shot...what a mistake. I quickly realized that I knew little more than the chorus and totally butchered the rest, trying to rapidly speak them as they flashed on the screen. At least Clint got some good video of it and I still managed to score an 83! We spent a couple of hours at the karaoke and all really got into it by the end of the night. The Danish girl turned out to have a great voice and I was really surprised at how San and her brother knew the words to many American songs that I had never even heard of. I also noticed that the Vietnamese love the echo effect on the microphone.

The following day we concluded our 'tour' with a visit to a local 'cham minority village' where they weave and sell things, a swing by the local mosque, and a stop at a floating fish farm, and then it was back on the bus to head up to Saigon.

Photos: Chau Doc

Camera

After dinner and the New Years celebration we were walking back to our guest house along the main riverside street and chatting when all of a sudden I felt my camera being pulled from my shoulder. I turned around immediately and started running and yelling after the thief. First I followed him through traffic and to the other side of the street and almost as soon as we'd crossed he dashed back into the traffic and to the first side, again Clint and I followed with little to no look in either direction. Clint and I must have been gaining because suddenly I saw my camera case fly up and hit the ground in front of me and send my camera bouncing along the sidewalk. Luckily, everything was still there and aside from a few new dents and scratches the camera wasn't damaged. The experience certainly got the adrenaline pumping.

We spent the rest of the night cooling down and playing cards and the following morning caught the Mekong boat that we'd meant to take the day before.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Penom Penh Redux

Clint and I got back to Penom Penh and got a room at the 'Okay' guest house, spent the day seeing the inner-city sites, the palace and national museum, both of which were what you might expect. I ended up spending most of the museum time sitting on a bench in the garden observing museum goers and the lotus ponds. The palace was somewhat interesting, with lots of buddha statues that had been taken and buried in the forest during the Khmer Rouge, as well as a 'silver pagoda' whose floor consisted of 3000+ tiles made entirely of silver, each weighing ~1-2kgs.

We had planned to catch a boat down the Mekong River the following day but I woke with a start that morning, just 30mins before departure, with the realization that my Vietnam visa wasn't valid for another day. So instead we stayed another day in Penom Penh mostly lazing about, and had planned to spend all day that way but were convinced by an enterprising young rickshaw driver to go down to the Wat Penom to celebrate the Cambodian New Year. We had been aware that it was 'new year' weekend but had been surprised at how quiet things were, and had decided it was more of a family time.

From the driver's description it sounded like the only people that would be down at the wat were the small group of loners that didn't have any family in town that they could visit, so we were a bit surprised when we arrived and the park was packed with people, young, old and everyone in between. Similar to other Asian and Indian celebrations, for New Years the Cambodians throw baby powder and water on each other as part of the celebrations; needless to say it only took about 5 minutes for Clint and Ito get our first dousing of powder. Our rickshaw driver had come into the park with us to show us around and he quickly had us buy two bottles of powder to join in on the dispensing.

At first I was a bit skittish about getting powdered and doing any powdering but that soon wore off and before long we were both fairly well covered in powder and doing our fair bit of dispensing. Apparently this powdering has been a tradition for a long time but this year the government was trying to discourage it, we never found out why exactly. At one point a police officer came up with a sour look and snatched the bottle of powder out of my hand and threw it in the garbage; it was at this point that our driver decided to tell us that the powdering was 'not allowed' this year.

During our walking around Clint braved to try a friend cricket and I decided to give cockroach a shot, I have to say that it was better than the cricket, more crunchy but not as salty.

Photos: Penom Penh