June 29- Siem Reap, Cambodia

We have been having a great time in Cambodia, but we still haven't finished telling you about our last couple of days in Vietnam. Last Monday, June 26, we arranged to take a bike tour of the Mekong Delta, about one hour southeast of Ho Chi Minh City.

We got up bright and early (the tour began at 5:30!), picked up our bikes and with our guide, Yee, we biked a few kilometers to the bus station in Chinatown. Going back and forth between Boston and New York, we have gotten used to taking the Chinatown buses and it amazes us that halfway around the world, the budget buses still leave from Chinatown.

Unlike the other tourist tour buses we have taken before, this was the real deal local bus. They were selling sticky rice and other miscellaneous food treats wrapped in banana leaves through the windows while we were waiting to leave. When the seats filled up on the bus, the driver took out little stools (like the ones in the "restaurants" we ate at in Hanoi) and placed them down the aisle for people to sit on. There were no real bus stops along the way, either. The bus would just stop in front of a house or a dirt road and let people off or pick them up. Meanwhile, our bicycles were strapped to the top of the bus- at least we had real seats inside. When we finally reached our destination, a little man had to climb up on top of the bus and hand our bikes down to us.

From the bus station in Mekong City we rode our bikes a few more kilometers to the docks. On our way, we passed a small pond with a Vietnamese ghetto version of the Swan Boats in the Public Gardens in Boston. Like most farm animals in Vietnam, these swans looked a little malnourished.

Down at the docks, we boarded a small motor boat with our bikes. We rode down the Mekong River to a small island in the river delta. We left our bikes on the boat and walked through lush tropical fruit orchards boasting jackfruit, pomelo, dragonfruit, banana, mango, papaya, dongan (similar to lychee), and pineapple. It was pretty crazy to see how all of these things grow.

We continued on and walked to a little outdoor restaurant where we sampled an assortment of the fruits we just mentioned as well as one that we don't know the name of, but was super delicious. We had tried it in Hawaii too, and there it was called a brown sugar something or other, but we have no idea what they call it here. Yee couldn't remember either. While we ate, we were serenaded by a band of local traditional musicians and singers. I guess you could call it entertainment.

We walked a little further before boarding a different boat - a canoe this time. We hopped on, and were paddled down a little channel. Later we saw two men building a similar channel using no tools besides their hands. On the canoe ride, we got to wear the traditional conical bamboo hats. We blended right in with the locals - you would never know we weren't Vietnamese.

The canoe dropped us off at a makeshift dock where our motor boat was waiting for us. We switched boats and rode top a pretty large island in the delta. We hopped back on our bikes and rode along the channels to a "factory" where they make schlocky tchochkes (junk) out of coconut shells. Our guide gave us a half hearted explanation of how they make the stuff, and then we were back on our bikes.

Riding through the rice paddies, we came to a factory where they husked and cleaned the rice kernels. Behind the factory were fields and fields of rice paddies, where people worked endlessly tilling the fields. We saw (and climbed) a small mountain of unhusked rice before taking a tour of the factory to see how it went from the unhusked kernels to rice suitable for eating. Once inside, there was a small series of machines that did all the work, and Yee was very nice and explained everything to us, but it was too loud to hear a word she said. We saw the rice at each step of the process, and each time it was one step closer to being real rice, but we were no closer to actually understanding what happened to get it there.

We rode through villages on main roads and then through smaller villages on dirt roads. Then it was on to trails and paths, meandering through a series of creeks that the locals use for irrigation and transportation. We got a little nervous when our guide had to stop and ask for directions (twice). She still didn't know where we were and used her cell phone to call the home office. We weren't too far off, but we had to turn around. Let us talk about how muddy and narrow those paths were. It was about two or three feet wide and a similar drop off into the creek on either side of the path. Some of the creeks had cacti to keep out would be intruders...

It was at a particularly muddy junction that Jillian tried to turn but here wheels had other ideas. The bike skidded in the mud and sent Jillian soaring into the creek below. Ari was about to jump in after her, but the water was only about waist deep. She got up unscathed, but had to fish around in the mud for one of her shoes that had gotten stuck. It's a really good thing we were heading for a cocnut candy factory.

We were not too far away, and arrived at the candy factory just a few minutes later. Jillian was able to get cleaned up, then it was time to make the candy. They take the coconut and shave it all by hand, and put it into big mesh bags before squeezing all of the milk out of it. They then take the milk, mix it with sugar, and stir it over an open flame for hours until it is a delicious gooey mess. Then they pour it into long molds and make coconut candy snakes and let it cool in the mold. Once it cools, they take the snake, cut it into candy sized pieces and wrap each one individually with rice paper then paper-paper. It was quite a process. We got to help out with the wrapping, but we found we were much better at eating the candies than wrapping them. Needless to say, our candy wrapping careers did not last very long. At least that is one thing we can knock off of our list of potential jobs.

After gorging ourselves on coconut candies, we rode to a restaurant for a quick lunch before heading back to our boat. The boat took us back to Mekong City, where we rode our bikes to catch the bus that brought us back to Ho Chi Minh City. Everything was pretty uneventful until we got back to Chinatown in HCMC. Then the madness began. We have told you about the traffic all over Vietnam and how is is almost impossible to cross the street as a pedestrian. Well, it is ten times worse on a bicycle trying to ride with the flow of traffic. Luckily, the motorcycle drivers here are not nearly as aggressive as the cab drivers in New York that we have gotten used to, and we made it back to our hotel unscathed.

Yearning to get back to Thailand for some pad thai, we found a gem of a Thai restaurant around the corner from our hotel and had a lovely dinner.

The following morning we got up early and caught a taxi to the airport before flying out to Siem Reap. Needless to say, we didn't feel any safer being in a car than we did on bicycles. The roads are just not meant to be travelled on.

Of course our flight was delayed, but we made it here safely, which is all that matters. We got into Siem Reap in the early afternoon, and decided not to stay at the hotel that the taxi dropped us off at (we learned our lesson the hard way in Hanoi). We had met some cool travellers from Canada at the airport in Ho Chi Minh City, and the four of us set out to figure out where we were and to find a hotel near the center of town. We had gotten about halfway down the block when it started to sprinkle. We hadn't even taken three more steps when the heavens opened up and it began to POUR. It is monsoon season here, and it was only a matter of time before we felt the wrath of Mother Nature.

We stepped under an awning in front of a small store, but it was simply not acceptable to the shop owners to have us standing there. Instead, they pulled out a few plastic stools and invited four soaking wet gringos into their home/store for ome shelter from the rain. Every time we stood up, they followed us with a stool and beckoned for us to sit down again. They were so nice and we were very appreciative; we were off to a good start in Cambodia.

We soon realized that we were not far from the center of town at all, and the taxi driver had brought us exactly where we wanted to be. He was the firt taxi driver we have had who did this, so you can understand our skepticism. They usually drop you off at whichever hotel pays the best commission, regardless of where you want to be. A tuk tuk driver smelled his own opportunity for commission, and brought us from the shop one by one, in the rain, back to the hotel we originally got dropped off at. By the time we checked in and washed up, the rain let up and we walked into town for some dinner and drinks with our new friends. Shout out to Jamie and Allison!

Lots of love,
Jillian and Ari