Mekong Meandering

Having befriended all humans in the vicinity Alison moves on to the snakes
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Alison: To get to Cambodia we thought we would take the scenic route via the Mekong Delta.  Consequently we signed up for a three day tour along with our German friend Susan, Dutch Michael, and Duane and Dion (both ex-Manchester students) who we had befriended in Nha Trang.

The Mekong River officially starts in Tibet and spans Asia before meeting the sea across the borders of Vietnam and Cambodia.  The pace is slow on the delta and in complete contrast to the busy, polluted cities that we had experienced so far.  We rapidly decided that idling along the river on a boat taking photos of waving children and the spectacular scenery was definitely our kind of travelling.

The Mekong Crew - Gem, Susan, Dion, Michael and Duane
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Throughout the three day trip we stopped at various craft villages, each with their own specific purpose from coconut candy making, fish farming, honey gathering to rice and noodle making. On one morning we got to buy pineapple at the floating market which could only be described as organised chaos - very good pineapple though.

We also got to experience the Mekong Delta in the pouring rain whilst on the local canoes - our $1 ponchos are increasingly becoming our greatest buy yet!

The friendly Cambodian children
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We have also continued to branch out with our friend making skills and both decided to get friendly with a snake at one of the villages - an experience that was actually less scary than expected (but it probably helped that we got both boys to brave the snake handling first just in case the locals were lying about it not biting!)

Of course the trip also gave us our first taste of a land border crossing, an experience that has convinced me that they make all border towns as grotty as possible so that you do your best to move on quickly.  The process was long and involved much scrambling from boat to boat to checkpoint to checkpoint all up and down muddy banks with our packs strapped to our backs.  Needless to say once we finally made it to Phnom Penh we very much craved a cold beer.

Once we were over the border you could tell instantly that we had moved into another country - the scenery was so green and lush and the sun came out in full (cue funny one side burning due to angle of sun on boat).  Weirdly enough even the cows were different as they were pure white compared to the brown ones we had seen throughout Vietnam.  It was clear that the next part of our journey had begun...