January 10, 2007
To Chau Doc: Border crossing Into Vietnam
What a difference a few hundred meters make!!
As we cycle closer and closer to the border, we get a sense that things are changing and will change even more. The landscape changes from brown harvested rice fields to green growing fields.
Patrick takes the last of the Cambodian pictures, we spend the last riel on face masks and the border is in sight.
We reach a row of green corrugated steel huts that is the Cambodian Customs and Immigration, and we get exit stamps in our passports. We walk/ride to the Vietnam border and are stopped at a small hut to give our passports to an officer and then we are "escorted" to the next stop--filling out paperwork.
All the bags are off the bikes to go through an Xray machine. As Rachel is reloading the bikes, Patrick is "escorted" to the next station--where after he pays $1 for some "health" certification, we are given back our passports with the paperwork and entry stamp and at 1000am, we are officially in Vietnam.
Rachel was in College during the Vietnam War, and her brother was in Da Nang,so this is significant. Gone are the blue and red stripes with a white Angkor Wat flag of Cambodia, and now there is the Red with Yellow Star of Vietnam flags.
Also gone is the smooth asphalt.
Good for Rachel's front wheel wobble, but more tiring. The street narrows and the traffic increases, adding larger trucks to the mix. The hats are now pointed at the top. We are still riding on the right side of the road. The money is Dong (16000 to 1 USD) and we need to learn Thank you in Vietnamese.
We arrive to the Hotel about noon, there is a fridge, hot water, and TV but not a CNN partner hotel. First order of business after cleaning up is to find a bank to get local currency from the ATM. After lunch, we wander through the busy street market near the river. We see women paddling their long skinny boats back and forth, and we get talked into an hour long boat ride by a very friendly woman. The boat feels very unstable at first and we question if this was a smart move to take a ride on the muddy Bassac Mekong (Delta).... it's a great ride though!
The woman rows the boat standing up in the back, using two long paddles and keeping her balance. We venture up a side arm of the river zig zagging between anchored houseboats. The largest are built on floating barrels and have large cages submerged underneath holding thousands of good sized carp. Lots of these fillets are exported to the US. One stop at a fish farm we go "onboard" and feed the fish.
Many live on their boats with large fish farms, some rich. Many very poor live on small boats with an outhouse hanging over the side above the river. One more stop at a Cham Muslim village and visit a weavery, Rachel buys two shawls.
Two hours later we get back to the right side of the river.
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Today's ride: 74 km (46 miles)
Total: 3,857 km (2,395 miles)
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