Phnom Penh
To leave Vietnam via the Mekong Delta by boat was a time consuming affair. It was also an affair filled with sampling coconut candy, wearing triangle hats, photographing a small Vietnamese boy who loved posing for the cameras with his boa, having an old man play a whiny string instrument as we sipped tea and ate 'exotic' tropical fruits like lychee and dragon fruit and that brown one with all the seeds inside it. You ain't on a tour in Southeast Asia if there isn't at least one old white dude with an Asian 'wife'. His wife seemed a little bored with all the farang. Any chance she got she was out there in the background talking to the tour operators and staff at the various stops.
The night was spent in Chau Doc were the entertainment consisted of an old Croatian man that we kept running into on our way southward in Vietnam. He was sitting on the street having some drinks with locals. We joined for a few minutes before we took off to have a $4 crab dinner on another street.
The second day of the Mekong Delta tour was spent on a river and crossing the border where we were given a handy-dandy little piece of paper that informed us of the symptoms of SARS. The boat ride was long. I made good use of my camera by taking some self portraits but then turned the camera on the stilt houses and people waving to us from the riverbanks. Our boat got stuck under a bridge. The water was so low that we all had to get off to lighten the load. We were waved at from above, below, left and right. Then we bought some corn and got back on the boat.
The short bus ride into Phnom Penh involved variations of the same thumping Cambodian music videos complete with gyrating, sparingly clad girls doing stripper moves they'd seen in a much better video from somewhere else.
Phnom Penh's lakeside is where the backpacker ghetto is located. I loved it. It is a back alley around a large lake that will soon be filled in to create more prime downtown real estate space. The alley has a huge straight-out-of-Aladdin mosque at its entrance.
The first night we met up with Andrew whom we'd met on the boat ride into Laos. He took us to a bar where we played Trivial Pursuit. I'd like to blame the world's largest samosa for losing that game.
The night was spent in Chau Doc were the entertainment consisted of an old Croatian man that we kept running into on our way southward in Vietnam. He was sitting on the street having some drinks with locals. We joined for a few minutes before we took off to have a $4 crab dinner on another street.
The second day of the Mekong Delta tour was spent on a river and crossing the border where we were given a handy-dandy little piece of paper that informed us of the symptoms of SARS. The boat ride was long. I made good use of my camera by taking some self portraits but then turned the camera on the stilt houses and people waving to us from the riverbanks. Our boat got stuck under a bridge. The water was so low that we all had to get off to lighten the load. We were waved at from above, below, left and right. Then we bought some corn and got back on the boat.
The short bus ride into Phnom Penh involved variations of the same thumping Cambodian music videos complete with gyrating, sparingly clad girls doing stripper moves they'd seen in a much better video from somewhere else.
Phnom Penh's lakeside is where the backpacker ghetto is located. I loved it. It is a back alley around a large lake that will soon be filled in to create more prime downtown real estate space. The alley has a huge straight-out-of-Aladdin mosque at its entrance.
The first night we met up with Andrew whom we'd met on the boat ride into Laos. He took us to a bar where we played Trivial Pursuit. I'd like to blame the world's largest samosa for losing that game.
posted by LOTC at 1:02 AM
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