Mekong Delta Trip

The Mekong tours were cheap: 1 Day $8, 2 Days $20, 3 Days $30, with everything included but food. Our group was perfect- the Dutch couple (Carolina and Andre from Amsterdam) turned out to be a scream. The six of us got along really well and it simply made the trip. It was the middle of the rainy season, and we were expecting to get a little wet, but we go really lucky – the only time it rained was when we were in the minibus. Our guide and driver (Phuc1 and Phuc2… pronounced “Fook”) were hilarious – constant jokes and funny stories from Phuc1 (the guide) and silent chuckles by Phuc2. At night, Phuc2 would “disappear”. They called him “butterfly” – he had “girlfriends” in every place we stopped.

We took a lot of great river boat trips on sampans and longtails that gave us a front row look at life in the Mekong Delta. We visited a floating market, a snake market, a couple of tacky Chinese temples, and a few villages. One day we drove up a small mountain that overlooked the Cambodian border and surrounding fishing villages.

We would eat at small restaurants, getting sick of eating noodles, rice and vegetables. We were usually surrounded by homeless children who would beg the entire meal, then finish off our plates when we were done.

Beth and I taught the other guys how to play asshole – and they loved it! We would call Andre and Carolina “klootzak” when they were asshole (Dutch for asshole), and they ended up teaching us a few other “bad” words. When we saw the large 2-day tour contingent, we had to snicker at them (you always looked down on people taking shorter tours than you, and tried to avoid those taking longer tours!).

Phuc1 was in the army and Phuc2 was an American-trained green beret during the war, and they had some good stories. One way to get out of the army was to have 6 children, so Phuc1 tried his darnedest. He had his 5^th kid in 1975, but then the war ended. He looked at me with an insider’s grin and winked, “I worked very hard during this war!” He was sent, as were many others, to a “reeducation camp” until 1988, where he had to work the fields and attend brainwashing sessions. He all but forgot how to speak English, but after getting out, he started studying by radio. That’s probably why he speaks with an unexpected Australian accent!

The accommodation was pretty good, though the staff were unhelpful holdovers from the days of communism. As for the meals, they were decent enough, but we missed the variety of fare in Ho Chi Minh – we all ended up eating, drinking and playing asshole together at length our last two nights.