Chau Doc, Vietnam: 25th – 26th October 09

Today we crossed the border into Vietnam. We took a cab to the Cambodian side of the border and then had to walk 200 yards or so, stopping off to fill in forms. They didn’t have any taxis, buses or tuk-tuks at the Vietnamese side, so we had to travel the 30km to Chau Doc on motor bikes – this was a bit weird as we both had massive rucksacks with us and our motor bike drivers appeared to be in their 80s. Oh well, it was fun once we got going!

The next morning we had an early start – 5.30am to have a sunrise trip on the Mekong delta. We sailed around looking at floating villages and a floating market, and visited a fish farm and a Cham village. It was great as many people were getting up to start the day – we saw people bathing in the water and young kids rowing themselves to school. We bought some waffles for breakfast off a couple of sweet young girls in the Cham village. The Cham are an ethnic minority that I don’t know much about yet, but I’m sure I’ll find out more as we travel up the coast.

After a few hours rest in the middle of the day we were picked up by a couple of motorbikes and driven to Sam Mountain – more of a hill really, but it’s the biggest one around here and the views are amazing. We had a look around and then visited a couple of temples at the bottom of the mountain.

The temples in Vietnam are bizarre to say the least! Whereas in Cambodia all of the new temples are built in traditional style, using traditional techniques, the temples we saw today seemed completely…weird! They had gaudy statues of lions and dragons and snakes. They mixed Buddhas with Hindu gods – some of the ‘statues’ looked like they’d been shop mannequins in a previous life, and some were surrounded by flashing lights that wouldn’t look out of place in Blackpool. Very odd, but interesting to see, I think I quite like them!