A shorter post this time to describe our last few days in Vietnam and our travel to Cambodia as we are heading to our volunteering project in Battambang Cambodia.

Last night in Ho Chi Minh City

We had an excellent last evening in HCMC on the Reunification holiday. We finally found the hub of kite flying in HCMC and what a spectacle it was. We joined at least a thousand people with hundreds of kites in a dingy undeveloped expanse and gave our kite another go. It was like an ad-hoc festival where vendors sell snacks off of their motorcycles and impromptu dining areas are set up with plastic chairs and hot pot meals for sale. Our kite suffered a number of accidents, but the locals were happy to help us out, I think being slightly amused that foreigners were there.

The evening was capped by a huge fireworks display in the city center which we enjoyed watching squished amoung the crowds.

Tour of the Mekong Delta

Next up was a 3 day tour to the Mekong Delta area in Southern Vietnam. The Mekong Delta is a beautiful area that’s a maze of rivers, swamps and islands where boats are the main means of transportation. I visited the Mekong 25 years ago and was keen to see how it had changed. Similar to HCMC, there has been a ton of development which overall has been for the best – the education levels of the rural populations are much higher and the standards of living vastly improved. Of course, it now makes for less interesting tourist stops, but we enjoyed it nonetheless. The biggest shock was our visit to the Cai Rang floating markets which used to be a massive hub of trading activity each day and now with the emergence of supermarkets and the building of bridges to access larger cities, the market is about to see its end. It’s being kept alive for the tourists at the moment.

The tour we took was a private one, and felt like a luxury to have our own driver and guide for 3 days. It was a really nice break to have someone else make all of the decisions and we just had to follow along. The tour showed us a lot about the rural life in the Mekong Delta along with visits to the bigger towns of Ben Tre, Can Tho and Chau Doc. Lots of travel in a variety of boats which allowed us to visit the smaller communities. We saw a number of small handicraft and food shops doing things like mat making, basket weaving and coconut candy making. We also had an interesting visit on one boat house that had a fish farm of 50,000 fish underneath the house.

The area is known for its food and it didn’t disappoint. We loved the fish, we gave crocodile a try (although it was pretty bland) and discovered that coloured rice is a thing. The kids have been absolute troopers when it comes to trying new foods which helped a lot in this area of the country because the restaurants had little to no English on their menus, and Google translate did a horrible job for us. We never really knew what we were ordering, but we ate everything that arrived.

This area of the country is also quite religious, with about 80% of the population being Buddhist, so we couldn’t miss the local temples and pagodas. One in particular was the quite famous Ba Chua Xu Temple which reveres the Lady of Chau Doc who is considered to be the richest goddess in Vietnam, and from seeing what visitors were offering at the temple, I am not surprised. I said a little prayer there to keep the family healthy and safe on this trip – and I was reassured that prayers at that temple always come true, phew! We also stopped by to see a new 82 m Buddha being carved into a mountainside, which is apparently the largest of its type in the world. Interesting that projects like this are funded by the secular communist government – I think they are currently taking a populist approach.

We did get off the beaten track quite a bit on the tour and experienced a number of the sights as the only white people there. We definitely stood out and got a lot of stares and pointing fingers, but all friendly of course. I think travelling with 3 boys is also unusual and we get a LOT of comments here about the luckiness of 3 boys. Indonesia was the same on that front. On a number of occasions as we were visiting local villagers showing their craft, they asked to take photos of us as we were taking photos of them. The best however was in one of the temples, two local women were so enamored with Steve and asked to take a photo of him. Right after the photo was taken, in walk the three kids (who most of you know look like clones of Steve) which literally prompted squeals from the women and a flurry as they tried to take more photos, but the kids ran too quickly! Our tour guide told us that straight noses are considered attractive to the Vietnamese so the Waslander males will always be popular here.

Some photos below from the tour. Click on photos below if you want to see full size.

Phnom Penh

We’re doing just a quick overnight stop in Phnom Penh to have a glimpse of the city before we head up north tomorrow. We arrived in immense heat in the middle of the day today – I think the hottest of our whole trip. But somehow by evening it cooled down to a manageable temperature, cooler than we had in Vietnam, so we had a nice walk around the palace area. It’s a vibrant city full of life, with throngs of people hanging out, eating, playing along the river’s edge to get a bit of a breeze. A funny mix of tuk-tuks and Prius’ that fill the busy streets, along with motorbikes of course. It turns out that our boys have movie-star status here too with the hotel staff very excitedly asking them for a photo as we were heading out to dinner, pretty funny!

We look forward to learning more about Cambodia as we are here for 3 weeks – more to come in my next blog posts!