We made it ... a beautiful and relaxed border crossing from Cambodia to Vietnam on the Mekong. We booked a 3-day tour via boat and bus to discover the Mekong delta.
Vietnam is great!!! Our first impressions of this country are as perfect as they can be. The river cruise was lovely - nice weather and amazing people - kids and adults waving from the land or boats and shouting greetings and always smiling for the camera. In the Mekong delta the people live different lives. It is almost like centuries ago - duck farms, fishing, rice fields and water buffalo, wood houses on stilts and rowing boats, but with the most charming people.
The river provides everything - the things for living and daily needs - water for washing clothes or dishes and the water for body hygiene (brushing teeth or washing hair etc.). Of course the river is very dirty, and imagining us drinking it is impossible, but the Mekong people are used to it and are totally fine with using it just like our tab water.
Chau Doc, the first Vietnamese city after the border, turned out to be the cutest big city we've been to. It has 100.000 inhabitants, but still the charm of a small town, tourists are still very exotic and everywhere you are starred at very obviously and kids are waving and shouting and running after you. But the most positive thing for us - you could walk down the market and enjoy these strange things they sell without any annoying touting and you still pay the local price for local things. Our dinner was 10.000 Dong (0,5 Euro) for Pho, a fresh cooked beef & noodle soup with vegetables, and our fresh sugar cane juice was 3.000 Dong (0,15 Euro). The people are very friendly and they try to practice their few English words like "Hello", "How are you?" or "Happy New Year", but don't expect an answer - they haven't learned that yet :) So if you want to know how much it costs, they just show you the banknote with an adoring smile!
We had a sweet tour guide - a Vietnames woman from Chau Doc. She asked us if we would volunteer in a school to practise English conversation with 2 classes. So we spontanously agreed and it was such an amazing experience. Our first lesson was with the small ones (6-11 years) and after a shy beginning we didn't know whom to answer first their questions like "How tall are you?", "How is your home like?", "What are your hobbies?", "When do you get up?" and so on. But the question they enjoyed the most was "What is your telephone number?" with everyone writing my long answer in their exercise books ;). Our second class was actually more of a conversation and they constantly reassured me how highly regarded doctors are in Vietnam and were eager to find out everything about living and studying in Germany. So that's what we did last night - meeting these locals and having a really good time with them.
Tonight we stay in Can Tho, another big city right at the Mekong. Tomorrow is the last day of our tour starting with the floating markets and finishing in Saigon/ Ho Chi Minh City. There we'll stay maybe another day and try to catch an open bus heading north, where you can hop on and off as much as you like on your way to Hanoi. So since our days together are count (Holger leaves 27th or 28th of September to Singapore), we try to have some interesting but also relaxing days in Vietnam.
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