Good Morning Vietnam

Day Seventeen: 2/28 – RV Tonle Pandaw Day #6
Title: Good Morning Vietnam

Good Morning Vietnam! Our first full day in Vietnam must have been fun because I am just getting time to write about it now (and it is two days later!). The day was scheduled with one long excursion in the morning and a lecture in the afternoon.

We departed the Pandaw at 8:30 am on a smaller local boat. We rode it for roughly an hour from our mooring location through the Tan Chau Canal. Once again the sites were quite interesting. While everything was beginning to look the same, every few minutes there would be something so foreign or so cute that it made the hour fly by.

Upon arrival at Chau Doc we took a local city tour by rickshaw. That was really fun. A rickshaw is basically a hard, one seat, carriage like thing pulled by a bicycle. To get into a rickshaw you stand on an upside milk crate, sit down and then swing your legs into the carriage. I was off before dad climbed into his rickshaw but I bet it looked like poetry in motion ;~> I felt very sorry for the little man who had to peddle around WOP. He looked terrified and rightfully so. Seeing Napoleon in his rickshaw was also quite entertaining. I was just waiting for him to start barking out orders.

Chau Doc is a pretty typical looking midsize city in a third world country. On all of the stoops there were people pushing their wares. Rabbit ears were atop many TV’s visible from the street. There were smells both good and bad and lots of nice fresh looking produce rolling down the street in carts. Motorbikes or scooters were everywhere. Every so often I spotted one with a load that defied the laws of physics. I have some pictures of this that are pretty cool.

Upon conclusion of our rickshaw ride (it was 20 minutes or so) we walked around the big pagoda in town and then went to the local market. My goal for this shopping time was to locate some blank CD’s. Some passengers on the boat had requested that I burn them some pictures and a few of the crew on the boat wanted American music. I asked our guide to help me find a place. Within ten minutes we had found and purchased the discs. I was a happy camper. The rest of the time dad and I wandered around the market.

Bailey would have been a fan of this market because there was a ridiculous amount of fabric for sale. I have seen markets with large concentrations of fabric at other times in Asia but this was the first time I had seen it on this trip. We didn’t purchase any but dad took lots of pictures to show the vast color, material and pattern options.

After the market we visited a local fish farm. If I’m being honest I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to what the guide was saying about the farm. I was having too much fun with the little boy on our boat. He had a mini battery operated fan and thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I would guess he was about three years old. He didn’t say anything but his smile could have lit up a room and his eyes definitely had some stories to tell. His mom was the driver of our little boat that we took from Chau Doc to the fish farm. She was the only female motorboat driver that I saw in all of our travels on the waterway. One other thing that I found interesting was that the little boy didn’t wear any kind of life jacket. I doubt that he knew how to swim but clearly both he and his mother were very comfortable on the water.

Our final stop on the extended morning tour was at the Cham Village. It is the dry season in Vietnam and the water level in many places is fairly low. In order to get to the start of the village we had to walk across a very cool bamboo bridge. I am pretty sure that our guide was convinced that all of the fat westerners were going to break it. He kept very politely trying to get the group to move along. He was not very successful but fortunately the bridge held its ground.

In the Cham village, like every other village, little kids accosted us. The product of choice in this village was a baked good that looked like a waffle. They appeared kind of good and were evidently coconut flavored but I feared my intestinal track might not like them, so I didn’t purchase any.

Our stop in this particular village had two main purposes; to see a mosque and view the Vietnamese and Cambodian border from the Vietnamese side. This was my first visit to any type of Islamic holy center. I’m not proud of this fact but I couldn’t help but wonder how the little kids who were trying so desperately to sell us their waffles felt about westerners. I am not sure if preconceived notions played a role but the kids in this particular village seemed less friendly and frankly less happy than those in all of the Buddhist villages. I didn’t ask anyone else on the trip if they sensed this… but maybe I will before the trip ends.

On our way out of village I took one of my favorite pictures from the trip. There was a little girl (maybe eight years old) hanging out the window of a fairly primitive house while her seemingly ancient grandpa looked on. I took two shots of this composed in different fashions. I can’t decide which I like better. Maybe I’ll put it out to a blog viewer vote ;~>

On our way back to the Pandaw we were served snacks by a crewmember that had come along with the expressed purpose of feeding us. Because the morning excursion was longer than usual our lunch was scheduled for an hour later than every other day on the trip. The cruise director feared that we might get hungry, so he sent along one of the dinner waitresses to serve us beverages, cakes and bananas on our 35-minute boat ride back to the Pandaw. The service and professionalism on the ship was really quite remarkable.

I was pretty darn tired after returning to the boat and eating lunch. The only activity scheduled for the afternoon was a lecture by our guide on Vietnam. Obviously dad is on this trip with me, so I decided it would be best to just hit him up for the Cliff’s Notes version after my extended nap.

Post nap I took a shower and went down to dinner with dad. The dining room was pretty full upon our arrival. The only table with two open seats available was with WOP and OP. Dad and I decided it would be best if we split for the night. I didn’t mind. I had eaten 51 straight meals with him, so a break was actually almost welcomed. I ate with the Green’s (Nicole, Dave and Caron) and Joan and Gerald Schwartz. Joan is originally from the States but lives in Hamburg, Germany with her German husband Gerald. I enjoyed the dinner company and hope that they did as well. One thing I know for sure is that all of us did not enjoy the “dessert”.

Dessert on this particular evening was Asian fair. It was called “green been and coconut soup”. I am not even sure how to describe it. Normally I like anything and everything with a coconut base. I suppose this is the exception that makes that a rule. It was truly dreadful. No one at our table ate more than a few bites. Gerald teased the food and beverage guy (F&B), Ivan (who had just boarded our boat a day earlier), that dessert was horrendous and we should have a dessert (tiramisu) from Ivan’s country (Italy) the next night. Ivan left the table as the “F&B guy”, I left it “F&disappointed” ;~>

On the way out of the dining room dad came over and asked us all how we liked dessert. Clearly we all said it was gross and that we only had one bite. Dad on the other hand said he kind of liked it. Needless to say he licked his bowl clean.

I don’t know that I have ever seen my dad leave anything on his plate. This got me to wondering about the worst meal he has ever had. According to Dr. P. his worst meal occurred in Venice, Italy at an outdoor café. It was a gondolier’s lunch and it was black rice and raw squid. The squid was pink on top of the black rice. According to dad it smelled like bait. He says he couldn’t eat it. He must really mean it too because he followed that statement up with “and believe me… that year in Europe I ate all of anything I bought.” For the most part… I would say that last statement (“I ate all of anything I bought”) is still true to this day.

After dinner Nicole, Cathy and I played another game of Scrabble on the sundeck. Post game Nicole and I stayed up chatting with one of the bartenders named Sopha. We had fun learning new things about Cambodia (that is where he is from) and teaching him things about America. As much as anything I think Nicole and I enjoyed spending time with another person under 30 years old.

Katy