Vietnam: A Country Filled With Waterways

January 8, 2009

Mekong River, Vietnam near Cao Liu

4:30 am aboard the Pandaw Riverboat



After a luxurious room service breakfast that soothed my severely jetlagged body, I traveled by bus from Saigon south to the delta. Destination: MyTho. The countryside outside the city was not what I expected. The highways could be any secondary road in the U.S. that has four lanes not the dusty, bumpy two lane route I had expected. Motorbikes ( many more than other transportation modes as in Saigon ) share the lane with buses, trucks and an occasional car, all jockeying for position. The government continues to work on infrastructure with the promise of universities along this new highway and commerce of all kinds since it connects Hanoi and Saigon both to the mouth of the Mekong in the town of Can Tho.



It took nearly an hour to reach the end of HCM City. The city sprawls nearly eighty Km north to south and thirty east to west, and is, sadly, dotted with a mixture of new, shiny high-rises that look terribly out of place next to tin roofed shacks. After nearly an hour as the city disappeared, the landscape changed to the lush green of rice fields, sightings of water buffalo, and egrets gracefully standing in the endless waterways that lead to the delta. This is truly a culture bound to the plenty of the water and the abundance of the jungle.



As the landscape changes and we enter a new province, a large monument looms tall against the flat land leading to the delta that was erected to the “martyrs” of the war along with a huge cemetery, the burial ground for all Vietnamese soldiers from this province who died in the Vietnam War. Our guide tells us that each province has its own monument and cemetery.



Midday, I boarded the riverboat that will be my home for the next eight days near MyTho which is about 30 miles from the Mekong Delta along with twenty other passengers and then headed north toward the Cambodia border. The boat could be a partner to the one in Murder on the Orient Express with beautiful wood floors and cabins and brass fittings everywhere. The ship is outfitted for fifty or so passengers but lucky for us, there are less than half the quota.



The Mekong River reminds me of the Mississippi in width and importance to this country (and it is muddy with a strong current as well), and if you look at the geography of Vietnam, it accomplishes much the same thing—it is roughly in the center of this long, narrow country and provides a major artery for transport of products downstream to either be used in Saigon/HCM City, or exported via the Delta to everywhere in the world.

As the hot afternoon sun moved west, we were taken yy small skiff on an ecursion into some of the backwaters of the Mekong to small villages. Local Vietnamese farm/harvest luscious fruits like lichee, pineapple, mango, and jackfruit or run brick factories evidenced from the river by the beehive shaped kilns or fish the river with cantilevered nets that catch local fish as they swim by with the current.

The river is tidal, and the depth at low tide is only about six feet, so the local boats are long and flat with either very noisy, put-put engines or the traditional canoe-like boats that are often steered by women in the palm leaf pointed hats who use two long poles to move the boat forward. As we went farther away from the main channel that is probably a mile or so in width, the small waterways snaking off in all directions are maybe sixty feet across.



It’s essentially jungle. Instantly as we entered ever smaller channels with low lying vine branches grazing the canopy of the boat, I could see images from Apocalypse Now or any number of Vietnam movies. It was otherworldly. I felt totally remote from the rest of the world as we moved deeper into the mix of jungle and waterways, and an occasional tin roofed concrete block small house There’s stillness about this fairly remote part of the country that sends chills up and down your spine because it is so difficult—and different from a western reality. I had a renewed compassion for the Americans that walked these swamps in the sweltering heat with danger from both the terrain and climate but the Vietnamese who know every inch of these backwaters. In the village ( only a bonsai farm so far as I could tell ) we stopped and admired the nursery, and, as a sideshow, got a chance to hold the 50 pound python caged in a far corner. The final kitch of this pretty touristy sidetrip was an opportunity to have snake wine, a local delicacy that is very strong rice wine that is fermented in a jar with a dead python. I’m told it makes everyone sexier.

The boat is anchored overnight in the center of the this very big river. The moon has set but I can see the big dipper and hundreds of stars that I don’t know or maybe just disoriented enough not to recognize. I can hear the engines of small skiffs of local fishermen and see in the distance little dots of lights, some channel markers (even red and green signals to guide boats in and out of the small waterways which I didn’t expect). But mostly, it is humid and very, very dark. It is the second time on this trip thus far that I have felt a million miles away from home.



Travel requires three essential needs to be met, I think: shelter, food and safety. But I’ve got my own additional set that centers me in a totally unfamiliar culture. Top of my list is being able to see the night sky—the same sky that, generally speaking, I could see in New York, Philadelphia, Nantucket.



I saw the night sky—even the half full moon that had been just a sliver when I left New York-- on my first night in Southeast Asia from behind my friend’s motorbike in Saigon as we whizzed through the mayhem of the city with thousands of other bikers. I saw it again from my window high above Saigon the following night—even the evening star visible despite the city lights. And, tonight (this morning), the big dipper. The North Star.



So, the song lyric is right, I think. It is a small world after all.

MC