Apocalypse Now
Dave Says:
There are two ways to travel from Saigon, Vietnam into Phnom Phen, Cambodia: the easy way and the hard way. The easy way involves a five hour bus trip from one city to the next and the hard way involves a boat trip up the Mekong Delta. Of course, the eager little travel agencies in Saigon are a little economical with the truth when it comes to detailing the boat trip. It basically goes like this: bus, boat, bus, boat, bicycle, boat, hotel, boat, boat, border, boat, bus, hotel. Each stage is a little different than the last and each degenerates in quality and speed. Think of it like this: bus, boat, bu, hotel, boa, bo, BORDER, bo, b, hotel. Our thinking, and call us foolish, was to take the more scenic way to another basically third world country.The upshot is what would have been a five hour bus trip ended up being about nine hours on a bus and eleven hours on a boat.
Its hard to condense twenty hours into a paragraph or two so here’s the highights:
1) A quick visit to a straw hut on the banks of the Mekong where a family makes the most wonderful coconut candy by hand. They are very generous with their free samples and free green tea - so much so that we were all stuffed on free candy and didn’t want to buy any.
2) Sunset on the Mekong river. The small straw houses on the banks of the river glow with life when the sun starts to set. Everyone wakes up from the heat of the day and gets busy with their chores.
3) Waving. I hate waving. I hate it when people who never normally wave get on a boat in Seattle or on the Thames and decide its time to wave to all and sundry. It makes me cringe. However, I now love waving. When rural Vietnamese and Cambodian families see a boat or bus of tourists they run out, jump up and down, wave, smile and shout ‘HELLO’ as loud as they can. This, my friends, is basic human contact. It says everything that is right about us as a species whereas getting on a boat in our western countries and deciding only now is the time to wave says more about what is wrong with our daily contact with our fellow global citizens than is right.
4) Border crossings in no-mans-land are interesting. A visa on entry for Cambodia is $20. If you would like the most pleasent crossing experience with barely a glance from the Cambodian offical that costs an extra $2. Think of it as a tip for very beautifully stamping your passport. We paid the $2 - this was no time for my usual opinions and sense of rightousness to get in the way.
5) Playing hi-five, lo-five and no-five with a little Vietnamese kid in the tiny town of Chau Doc. He didn’t know what to do, he just wanted to hold my hand; just wanted to see if I was real.
6) The Cambodian Pirates. When our boat finally was within fifteen feet of the dock in Cambodia there was a massive splash followed by twenty little hands clambering up the side of the boat, followed by ten little heads and then we were boarded. Kids ran everywhere on our little boat grabbing every bag they could find. Fortunatly we had our packs on our backs already but some weren’t so lucky and their bags went ashore to be held ransom for a dollar.
7) On the last bus trip, in the middle of absolutely nothing somewhere in Cambodia the bus broke down. It was getting dark and we lost all the coolent in the engine. I’m no expert but it probably was caused by stuffing twenty one tourists, eighteen heavy backpacks and one Cambodian driver who could speak no english into a circa 1980 twenty seat bus with no luggage space, running the air conditioning full blast and driving on roads that were paved for only 100 meters in every kilometer. The advantage of breaking down in the Mekong Delta is that 50 meters away in any direction is an almost unlimited source of coolent. So, the driver heads down to the river with a bucket and starts to load up the radiator with the finest Cambodian river water. He also throws a bunch of it over the engine for good measure. Two great things came of this event. Firstly the local kids ran up to, but a safe distance from the bus. They mugged for photos and shouted HELLO at us but when I went over to make contact they ran off giggling despite their mother telling them it was ok to meet us (although they stayed a safe distance away too). Secondly it cemented the friendship between the twenty one tourists who now were in, quite literally, the same boat, bus, then boat, bus, bus….. Shout out to Mark and Shirin who are from the UK and who we’re hanging out with us for the next few days.
I can say for sure that Marlon Brando is not at the end of the Mekong river in Vietnam but just like Martin Sheen I think we’ll remember this trip for a long time.