On the road with Steve and Elvis

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Cambodia has the best water bottles. Instead of names that evoke rushing mountain springs, they have people names. Like Steve and Rose. Even better? Steve's slogan is "The Quality Drops". Another favorite is the one with the nutrition label that tells me I've gotten 0% of my daily RDA of Salmonella from the water. Wonder how much Total has?

So we got a bottle of Steve and a bottle of Elvis and hit the road. Lucy did great! Wshew. We cycled down to the Vietnam border in a half day, then took a boat across the border to Chau Doc in the Mekong Delta area of Vietnam.

Again, as we crossed the border, an instant culture change. Vietnam has much more infrastructure than Cambodia. Streetlights, sidewalks. Road signs. The women actually do wear those conical hats and flowing white clothes that you see in all the pictures. And it is very much a water based living – riverways and canals are as important as, and better than, the roadways. (Definately easier to maintain!) How can standards and ways of living be so different a few km apart? Trade barriers? History of war? People are too poor to travel back and forth? People want to feel they belong to a cultural group?

Whatever the answer, we love Vietnam! They have neon flashing lights all over their parks, just for fun. They wear pajamas and slippers all day long. They have “cafes” which are like huge garages with rows of lawn chairs, either facing the street for heavy duty people watching, or facing a tv with sports or movies. The restaurants (all outdoors or literally on the sidewalk) have hammocks! The TV shows are all dubbed and all characters are done by the same person. In Cambodia they had a broadcast station where someone somewhere played DVDs continuously (you could see the pointer go to “stop”, then “play” the next one). Here there is a station where someone surfs cable channels! You hope you dont get too into one show before he/she decides to change. Best part? No commercials. This is communism at its best.

Houses in this part of the country are very open, usually with a front porch that is seamless with a family room. All eating, watching TV, and often sleeping happens in this room, which is open to the outside. You always know what your neighbors are up to, and who belongs to what house is somewhat fluid. We stayed in one guesthouse in a small alley where people wandered in and out of each others houses to gossip and watch TV. The other striking thing is that there is no furniture. When you eat you sit on the floor (floors are kept spotless!). Whatever you need, a mat to sit on, a bench to sort clothes on, is brought out from a stack by the wall. When our guesthouse owner wanted to put on makeup, she took out a portable mirror and a box of makeup, no bathroom furniture or cabinets needed.

And then we were off, through the Delta. We found amazing small roads through vast, as-far-as-the-eye-can -see rice paddies. Their color is so hard to describe, most people attempt with “electric green”. They are an intense spring green, with the slightest tinge of blue, but then dip each blade in firefly flourescence. Each day we go on more and more ‘minor roads’. Rice paddies give way to dense palm trees and foliage leaning into small winding networks of canals. Brief towns with lots of hammocks. We see rice and newly hand made incense drying by the side of the road. And no cars on the road. Well, maybe one per day. This is moto and bicycle country. Mostly kids, all in uniform, riding to and from school. We assume school is required, since we see ALL the kids in uniform, there are busy schools in every few km, and it is extremely rare to see a child working or selling something. EVERYONE says hello. The hellos come from far and wide, often you cant see the person they came from! We have learned to gauge each others moods by the 'Hello return index', the ratio of times you respond to someone who yells hello to you on the road. One day we were in a good mood and the ratio actually exceeded 1, meaning we said hello to more people than said hello to us. This achievement is not to be underestimated.

The kids seem to get a lot of school breaks, during which they snack on popsicles from roadside stands, play pool (there are sheds with 4-6 pool tables, swarmed with 8 year olds!), and random roller rinks (open air made of wooden floors surrounded by a fence, usually in the middle of fields). When we get hot we jump into the river with them (and then dry off in a hammock with an iced tea). When we get hungry we look for the Pho (noodles) and Com (rice) signs. These are usually served by friendly families on tables that are about 1 foot tall. The Vietnamese seem to fit right in them, but we always look like we’ve been banished to the kids table (“milk or apple juice with that?”). We usually chat with these families for a bit while we cool off, which leads to at least one marriage proposal a day. When they are not concerned with marrying us off, they love to play with our noses. They have no qualms about giggling at how our noses are ‘pointy out’ compared to theirs.

Overall, they have a very unique mix of the ‘old’ and the ‘new’. There are definately things that we would consider old fashioned, like ox carts and foot pumped sewing machines, mixed in with internet cafes and new motorcycles. What is unique is the feel that the old fashioned things are there not because they want to update them and haven’t been able to, but because that particular method is the best or simplest way to get the job done. Choosing modern or traditional, whatever suits the task. They also have a healthy amount of privatization with not much commercialism, most places are family owned and run without chains, etc. On the surface, they make communism look good. Of course, people say that the one party system leads to major beauracracy and corruption and in the country we have yet to scratch the surface of that.