(click to enlarge)
(click to enlarge)
After some negotiations by the captain's wife with the customs officials at the border, our boat proceeded into Vietnam. The Tonle Sap joins the Mekong at Phnom Penh, so we were finally on the Mekong River. It's big and busy, though evidence of traditional farming on the banks, such as these water buffalo come to get their evening drink and bath, was plentiful. There was strikingly more activity -- commerce and construction -- on the Vietnamese side of the border, including many barges hauling sand. Vietnam is not as laid-back as Cambodia, and one got the sense that the Vietnamese are intent on catching up with the developed world.
A joke that local people tell about the differences between the four countries in the region:
The Vietnamese grow rice, the Cambodians watch rice grow, the Laotians listen to the rice growing, and the Thai sell rice.
