I crawled out of bed at 5:30 a.m. the day I was to leave Hoi An, and headed for the terrace and a cup of the strong Vietnamese coffee. I was rewarded by the sight of the rising sun tracing twin paths of gold across the river, and shamed by an old man on the bridge doing his morning exercises. A teenager interested in computers collected me from my hotel in an upmarket jeep, and drove me to the 28-seat Sinh Cafe bus, which pulled out, with 20 sleepy passengers, at 6:40.
Three 10 minute rest stops and a 45 minute lunch break (at 2:00 p.m.) broke a noisy and bumpy 12 and a half hour journey. The noise appeared to be related to the air conditioning, which worked almost too well. The bumps were attributable to the road -- most of the bridges and a lot of the road were under repair. I was surprised and a little concerned to discover that the bus carried only one driver, and grateful that only passengers, mostly young backpackers, fell asleep.
Perhaps they found the rice paddies -- bright green, yellow-green, sparsely populated by workers in conical straw hats with a few bullocks and an occasional machine -- soporific. Perhaps they had hangovers. I noticed many war memorials, usually towers, surrounded by white headstones, but no bomb craters. In places the road ran near the sea, occasionally over steep cliffs. The most beautiful bay, north of Dai Lanh, was disfigured by a refinery, and while Dai Lanh itself offered a flat, sandy beach the road ran too close for quiet.
My relief at finally reaching Nha Trang was tempered by the discovery that the ride ended in the courtyard of a hotel behind the Sinh Cafe office, where the passengers were immediately surrounded by hotel staff hustling for customers. At $8.00 US a double, with AC, in the middle of the backpacker ghetto, it was no doubt a bargain, but I had no interest in staying there. Instead I took a moto to the Post Hotel, well north of the ghetto, not really an extravagance at $18.00, and although the building was a little shabby, I loved my huge room, with a balcony affording a grandstand view of the beach.
After dinner I took a chair outside to watch the action. A steady stream of motor bikes swept up and down the wide avenue below me. Every so often one would stop, and the rider would join one of the little groups of men and women sitting on the beach. Occasionally a man would get up and pee in the sea, but otherwise conversation seemed to be the only activity -- even the few vendors were doing little business.
Next morning the beach was mostly empty: morning exercise took place on the promenade. I walked a few blocks south, admiring the slow, graceful movements, and noting that it was already getting hot. Puzzled by four men pulling on a long and apparently heavy rope, I finally realized that the other end of the rope was attached to a distant boat, and that they were fishing.
While Nha Trang offered a long sweep of sand, and plenty of hotels, restaurants and cafes, the town was big and noisy and I was happy to leave for Mui Ne, where I hoped to find some peace and quiet. I felt I needed a rest before heading for Cambodia. I arrived to find that new buildings were going up wherever there was space, and that the Palmira Resort was offering me a room facing the beach, but next to a noisy construction site.
A move to a different room produced all the peace I could ask for. In addition to the beach, the Palmira offered a big swimming pool, a restaurant, and a collection of books -- although only four were in English. Cheaper food was available at a couple of cafes across the street. It was out of season, with few guests, and I soon realized the cause -- a high wind that rose around noon. It might be more accurate to call it a gale -- walking on the beach in the afternoon was a good way to get sandblasted. I walked it in the morning instead, noting whole families collecting shellfish on the few rocks, and spent the afternoons by the pool, shaded by sturdy bamboo umbrellas and sheltered by palms.
Three lazy days were enough, and a I took a final bus to Saigon. As we neared the city, I was surprised to find that I was driving through a Christian section. A typical Vietnamese house is long and narrow -- just one room and a passageway wide -- covered in pastel plaster with a decorated cornice on the top story, and sometimes with a statue perched on the flat roof. Here the statues were often of Mary holding a baby, and once I saw one of Jesus. The city itself was decorated for the Christmas season, or at least the stores were. I went back to Notre Dame cathedral to admire its decorations, but there were none.
Returning to Saigon almost felt like coming home. I had barely dismounted from the moto delivering me back to the Saigon Pink II when one of the staff rushed up to take my pack, and my key and TV remote were handed over before I even said hello. I worked my way down my to-do list -- hair cut (and pedicure), made-to-measure cotton trousers and top, shopping for gifts, a trip to visit the highly decorated pagodas in the Chinese section of Cholon, and dinner at the Mandarine. The Mandarine's papaya and grilled beef salad was delicious, the shrimp in tamarind adequate, but most of my attention was taken up by the friendly expat British couple at the next table. I was surprised to discover that BP, the husband's employer, didn't allow them to ride in cars without seat belts, which eliminated most of the taxis, or to take motos. Instead they had a chauffeur-driven Toyota.
Looking at the map when I was planning the trip, I thought that the most logical, and fun, way to get from Vietnam to Cambodia was by boat up the Mekong. At that time Lonely Planet insisted that the only border crossing was by road at Moc Bai/Bavet -- requiring a seven to ten-hour bus trip from Saigon to Phnom Penh. Googling around on the Internet, however, I turned up a company, Delta Adventure Tours, that offered a boat trip to Phnom Penh as an add-on to their Mekong delta tours. It seemed that Lonely Planet was out of date. Almost the first thing I did when I initially arrived in Saigon was to confirm that the boat really ran, to book a ticket, and to have the tour company organize my Cambodian visa (24 hours and $25 US).
Unfortunately I still wound up spending several hours on a bus on the first leg of the journey. The only excitement was the impressive mile-long My Thuan "cable-stayed" bridge built with Australian aid near Vinh Long. The sleek new bridge replaced a ferry over one of the main branches of the Mekong, but we still needed to ride a ferry, with a cavernous traffic deck, over the Song Hau Giang branch to reach Can Tho.
After an indifferent lunch at an hotel associated with the tour company, we finally left the bus. Small open boats wound their way down twisting, overgrown waterways to a stork "sanctuary". The wood and bamboo bridges carrying footpaths over the water were picturesque, but the houses looked ramshackle and the water muddy. The storks looked -- and sounded -- like storks.
Our guide allowed plenty of time for us to watch big white birds socializing in the tree tops before we moved on, transferring to a bigger boat for the four hour trip up a wide grey-brown stretch of the river to Cau Doc. Chatting to my fellow-passengers, I discovered one was American -- the first I'd met in a long time. Anne was taking time out from medical school to travel, although I noticed she had brought along an anatomy text book. Cau Doc, reached after dark, seemed sadly lacking in docks (sorry) -- we disembarked across a stretch of mud and water hyacinths, stepping gingerly on half-seen sacks. The Delta Adventure Tours resort was comfortable enough, although somewhat spartan and well out of town, except that the wall fans had a disconcerting tendency to explode.
The next morning we picked our way back across the hyacinths to three-person open row boats, poled by women well-wrapped against the sun. Our objective was a floating village, a picturesque-sounding destination that was anything but. Built of unpainted wood and corrugated iron, the only difference from impoverished sections of towns on land was that the houses floated on metal drums, with fish farms conveniently located underneath. The Cham village we visited next, planted on stilts in mud that was sometimes below flood level, was, aside from its two mosques, in little better shape.
Finally, we effected a midstream transfer to two small speed boats, and took off for Cambodia. At the Vietnamese border post, where a cluster of concrete buildings sat well up the bank from a wooden jetty, the guide collected our passports and we were processed en masse. A few minutes later we disembarked in Cambodia, where three uniformed immigration officials scrutinized and stamped our documents, and a fourth determined that we matched our passport photographs. Despite the excess of officials, there was a more laid-back feeling about the Cambodian border post, and I discovered a well-populated dovecote in its compound.
The contrast between the countries was immediate. In Vietnam, the Mekong had been busy with boats and lined with floating fish farms and industrial-looking buildings. Now we motored into a pastoral painting -- little river traffic, and that mostly small fishing skiffs; banks green with low trees and grass; the only signs of life a few bamboo houses and an occasional cow. If I had needed additional justification for spending two days on the river instead of an hour in a plane, experiencing this abrupt transition would have provided it.
Nearly five hours after we left the border at Vinh Xuang/Kaam Sambor, we reached the outskirts of Phnom Penh, no doubt much to the relief of the young man collapsed across the back seat, who had been sick several times en route. The city, currently home to a million people, appeared low and quiet. On the wrong side of the boat to see well, I caught tantalizing glimpses of Thai-style orange roofs and gilded stupas. I was eager to get off the boat and start exploring.
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