Slow boat to Vietnam

So we left Cambodia behind and took a slow boat down the Mekong & Bassac rivers into the Mekong Delta to the border town of Chau Doc.

It was definately a slow boat and took almost all day sowe were glad when we got  over the border and changed to a smaller boat that turned down intoa canal.  Here we could see the people and their homes, livestock and boats more closely which was interesting. 

Some of the more interesting sights were the many monkey bridges – rickety looking things that we saw a number of people crossing as we passed under and duck pens – fenced off areas on the bank of the river, with a small bit of water absolutely covered in ducks.  One pen was filledwith blue ducks!  Apparently they dye the ducksso they don’t get mixed up with the neighbours’.

Finally made it to Chau Doc and onto Vietnamese soil.  Good roads, lots of advertising billboards, clean streets – completely different to Cambodia.. except for the traffic- even more crazy!!  Less vehicles but way more bikes which go everywhere.  No tuk tuks, which we had gotten quite used to, so the only transport available to us were cyclos – basically a small platform  on the back of a bicycle.  We managed to flag down 2, and the drivers assured us we could fit all our backpacks plus 6 people.   I had my doubts to be honest  but somehow we managed it and took  photos toprove it!  It was a little daunting to ride into that sort of traffic on the back of bike!

We got a hotel in the middle of town and were woken very early by the sounds of the market directly opposite, the traffic and New Year celebrations (Tet).