Our last week in Cambodia was fun as it collided with the Khmer New Year when everything was happening.
What Naomi forgot to mention was that when we were in Kratie, I decided to explore an island in the Mekong River on a bike by myself while she was lying in bed pretending to be sick. It seemed a great idea at the time.
After I endured a ride on a small boat carrying the bike with 20 people sitting on the edge of the boat when the waterline was only 10cm from the edge, I soon realised that this was probably not for the faint-hearted.
After we landed on the beach, first someone fell out of the boat accidentally, then I discovered that we had to jump into the knee-deep water and walk all the way up the beach. It was okay for commuters with not much luggage. It turned out to be struggle for me with my hired bike which had to go into the water then had to be dragged up a 200m long beach and then up a hill. Before I even started riding, I was charmingly covered in sweat.
The island was a big contrast to Kratie as it was a very rural community with mostly straw housing. I am not even sure whether they had electricity in the houses. It was however calm and tranquil riding my bike along beside cattle, haystacks, and heaps of friendly locals sitting outside their straw houses watching me and my beach mat in curiosity. They all seemed very interested in my mat for some reason.
After about 30 minutes of riding, my butt started to ache big time from the bumps on the dirt road. I decided to turn around and rode to the other side of the island. I stopped by this cliff and sat on a bench to read my book and enjoy some quiet time.
As usual, my peace and quiet time did not last long. After I was about 20 pages into the book, the wind started to pick up, and within 2 minutes, it became a gale and then the rain followed. I have not seen wind as strong as that for a long long time. If you can imagine the rain falling at an almost horizontal level, you kinda get the gist. Outdoor furniture of some of the houses started to fly off into the air, my bike got blown over, pots and plates were everywhere. I was sheltering behind this wooden straw house when the roof started making creaking noises. I seriously thought if the wind was any stronger, the whole roof would just fly to the beach.
I don't get scared easily. But at the time, I was petrified. I had no idea the weather on the Mekong could turn so suddenly and I had no where strong enough to shelter.
Life is so unfair! Naomi was eating chocolate and watching TV in our air-conditioned room when I got back drenched by the rain.
The rest of our time in Phnom Penh was good. We stayed only one night before we came over to Saigon in Vietnam.
Cambodia turned out to be an amazing country. I am surprised how many people speak English and how friendly some of these people are. Although the country is severely hit by poverty and corruption, the attitude of the people and the hope that Cambodians conveyed was memorable.
Saigon, Vietnam
As soon as we entered Vietnam from Cambodia, I discovered that everything is a lot more developed. Power lines everywhere, concrete buildings were also everywhere.
We were scared of Saigon when we first got here. There were countless motorbikes and cars on the road. Naomi was scared of crossing the road by herself. Apparently, according to her, it's harder to hit 2 people together than one. Go figure.
I was once stuck in the middle of a 4 lane road during peak hour with thousands of scooters and cars shot past me and missed me by centimetres. It was NOT fun!
After I got used to the traffic, I started to appreciate how big this city is. Apparently unofficially 9 million people live here. It takes hours to go from one side of the city to the other side.
Food is amazing here. We have been pretty much eating all Vietnamese food as soon as we got here and are still going strong. We have also discovered a night market full of cheap, yummy and traditional food which we went to 3 nights in a row. Vietnamese food taste so much better here in Vietnam. I love Vietnamese food in Brisbane, but the food here is just so much better in variety and flavour. Not mentioning how cheap it is to eat here too.
We went to the War Remnants Museum a few days ago and it was full of a lot of propaganda about the Vietnam war and the France-Vietnam war. They do have some interesting artifacts, but the explanatory plaques were not exactly objective.
Can Tho is where the floating markets are in the Mekong Delta. We stayed in this hotel for US$10 per night which we thought was a bargain. After we settled in, we decided to go and hunt for a boat which could take us to the markets the next day.
Prices seemed to fluctuate greatly here for foreigners. We had people offering us boats from US$40 to US$60. After some heated bargaining, one boat driver agreed on our maximum price of US$35, which still appeared to be inflated.
We ate at this local beef restaurant in the side-streets because we could not afford to eat anywhere that had an English menu. It worked out well, we were the only foreigners in the whole restaurant, which in fact was fully packed. As we had no idea what steamboat to order (which everyone else was eating), we ordered beef noodle soup for less than US$1 each. Bargain! It was really yummy too. It was fun eating in local restaurants and just point to whatever is on the menu.
The floating markets were a lot smaller than expected. The Mekong was however majestic to say the least. It was so wide that it would be easily 200 metres wide. We went through small canals on the way back. Because it was low tide and not much water was in the canals, it turned out to be very difficult for our boat driver. She had to jump out to push our stuck boat out of the mud. It was pretty foul as the mud was knee deep and who knows what was in there.
We were pretty glad to get back to our hotel in one piece. It was very hot in the middle of the day and 8 hours of cruising was more than enough for me for one day on a small wooden longtail. Oh, by the way, we had a 5:30am start. I nearly fell into the Mekong after I accidentally fell asleep in the longtail.
We are now back to Saigon for a few more days for Naomi to go to every single market there is here to do her souvenir shopping.
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