The Mekong

The major river of SE Asia is the lifeline for millions of Vietnamese.  We negotiated with a family who owned a small freighter to transport us (Hugh, Keith & I) down the river from just south of the Cambodia border to the closest city to Saigon.  We do not know the name of this family – a mother, father, teenage daughter, son (pictured below) and a small dog.  This family lived on the river – they normally transported bananas from the south but this particular trip the freighter was empty on their way south.  The family was somewhat nervous at the outset with the 3 white travelers – we were loaded down with expensive cameras, laptops, etc. and smiled a lot – after a couple days they got comfortable with us.  Hugh had a Vietnamese phrase book which turned out to be totally useless so we could not verbally communicate with our hosts. We consider this one of the best adventures we ever had – right up there with the time we got stuck on a sandbar in Myanmar on a much larger freighter. Photo of the boat and family when they dropped us off (center photo above).

Checkout this slideshow of the river and the numerous stops we made along it.

Our host guiding the boat down the river