Many surprises have come up along the way, but motorbiking down a dirt road paralleling the Mekong River today has definitely been my favorite to date. The road is so narrow and my driver cruises. We politely honk as we come within inches of hitting bike riders and walkers. The motorbikers take us to a pier where we sit with Dua waiting for our 6th boat in the past 3 days.
Yesterday, Dua picked us up from one of the few buses we have been on this week, and took us to our homestay- his uncle's house. I am pretty sure it could qualify for the second hottest day of my life... The homestay was pretty boring, just sweating in the shade watching the silty polluted river drag itself through the flat land. We were mostly left to ourselves, except, when the kids (12 yr old boy and 20 year old girl) came to play with us. They brought us fruits and "messed up" one of our many speed scrabble rounds to practice spelling English words- which was fun! They would laugh at us when we would try to speak Vietnamese- being that it is a tonal language, we just can't seem to hear the specific inflections they use. We walked around a bit, but there wasn't much to do... we met our beds pretty early, where we shared a room with a lizard that could have stood a fighting chance with small dog. We were woken up at 6 for breakfast and then put onto the motorbikes for the fun ride to the pier.
Dua must have been my age, he works all days lugging tourists around the floating market... which is where we went to next! Unfortunately, we were not going with him, but a tour group.
So we are sitting on a pier blindly waiting for the next part of this three day journey. The pier is a limb of a cramped street market like one I have not yet seen. Woman wearing the traditional conical hats ("Non La") or a motorbike helmet rule this area- either buying or selling perishable goods. Buckets of live fish (from tiny to huge in size) and eels, tables full of fleshy meat, and fruits and vegetables stacked high in their glory of bright colors.
As I write I am watching a woman with a pair of scissors begin to fillet some of her hundreds of fish she is selling- snipping off the fins, gills, and tail with a few mindless moves. She cuts as if she is making hundreds of paper snowflakes... quick, easy, emotionless, methodically. The meat stands are unbelievable (lexie and I have recently started a "This Shit Would Not Fly in the States" list and these plastic tables in the sun with chunks of meat out in the open for sure makes the cut. I just watched a woman finish shaving the last whiskers or hairs off of some big mammal!)
The market is tight. Narrow walkways with lots of action at a jarring volume. I would like to take a moment to digress to the apparel switch that has happened at the boarder. The men- totally western, as in every country I have been to. They can get away with anything from jeans and a t-shirt to trousers and a button up to a towel and a cigarette. The women in Vietnam have a style I was unfamiliar with until now... they wear straight legged pants and long sleeve shirts, flip flops or rubber boots and their Non La hats. Often the prints of the pants and top match, but sometimes they are so different. I am at a loss of words to describe these prints- they look like a child's pajamas. I will add some pictures to help describe the outfits.
A crazy woman with a green and white swirly patterned pj set walks past me to throw some garbage in the river (because that is where the garbage goes here.) She stops in front of me, touches her freshly shaved head and says (sort of shouts) something at me. I smile (because that is what I do here.) She grabs my hand and we twirl around and dance for a little bit in the street. She's crazy, but I am crazy too.
The floating market is just like any food market I have been to except everyone is on boats... good name, I guess. We still are not sure if it is a traditional means of trade as much as a tourist sight, but it is an amazing sight. The dozens of wooden boats vary in size, they are either oared or car motored along with bellies filled with a particular crop. If you sell pineapples, then you put a pineapple on the highest part of your water craft- that is how others know where to find the pineapple boat guy. If you sell cans of soda, then you crash into the sides of boats labeled "TOURISM" if the bright orange life jacket didn't give it away :)
After our third long day on the Mekong, we are pushed into one last bus and brought to Saigon. Upon arrival, my headache which was localizing in my jaw and teeth dissipated! We were excited to have modern amenities and a hygienic atmosphere again!
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