Mighty Mekong cruising
The recent history of Vietnam and Cambodia remain ingrained in the imagination of the Western world. Ryan Evans takes a cruise into the heart of South East Asia.
The mighty big river resembled ‘‘an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body resting curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land’’.
At least that’s what the pretentiously packed Joseph Conrad classic Heart of Darkness says.
But what could scream Apocalypse Now, the Vietnam warera cinema classic based on Conrad’s novel, more than an eightday cruise up the Mekong River?
The cruise, beginning in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, and finishing deep in the heart of Cambodia, certainly resonates with the broad theme of the novel and the movie.
OK, so seven nights aboard the classy but not opulent Toum Tiou II – 38m long, carrying 28 passengers in 14 comfortable cabins, with a crew of 15 to cater to your travelling needs – is a far cry from a trip aboard a naval patrol boat to hunt a renegade colonel, or a steamer in search of a trader gone rogue.
Anything found at the end is bound to pale beside the insane villain Kurtz.
Still, there is something of the wild about the Indochinese Peninsula. For a generation brought up on Vietnam War stories, the romance of the region’s history can’t fail to intrigue.
G-Adventures is a small group travel company that offers ‘‘socially and environmentally’’ responsible tours. Its new Mekong River cruise offers travellers a glimpse of ‘‘one of the few big rivers in the world that refuses to be civilised’’.
The 4350km Mekong River (the 12th longest in the world) begins in the Tibetan Plateau and runs through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia, before it reaches the sea in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta.
For centuries it has been a major trading river and source of food for the cultures that have grown upon its banks. Markets, temples, and cultural sites, industrial operations and river-based trading activities are all on the agenda.
‘‘The traffic of the great city went on in the deepening night upon the sleepless river’’, Conrad wrote. He may have been describing the Thames, but he couldn’t have described the Mekong at its Saigon head in any better terms.
In Vietnam, the delta is made up of a huge network of channels and canals. They’re big, dirty, and busy, bustling with all manner of river traffic – ferries, barges, container ships, and dredges and fishing boats going about their business. The banks are lined with cranes, fuel stops, trading posts, and dwellings, and echo with the puttputt of small petrol engines, sounding remarkably similar, to the untrained ear, to the distinctive whump-whump of a Huey helicopter.
It’s just as chaotic as the scooter traffic in Ho Chi Minh City.
The city itself is aptly named, for the spirit of the Vietnamese leader who won his country its independence is everywhere. From the statue in the Nguyen Hue pedestrian square in the heart of the city, to the watchful portraits that hang above the blackboards in the schools. But nowhere is it more so than in the spirit of his people.
The Vietnamese carry themselves with a certain confidence, not quite arrogance, that is surely borne from their 40-year struggle for independence. It is curious that having beaten down the West (while remaining a communist state), they have been so quick to use their freedoms to embrace the cultural norms of their would be conquerors.
They are, it is to be discovered on the journey, to the Cambodian people as an American is to a Canadian, or an Australian to a Kiwi. They are pleasant and hospitable, but brash and hustling. They are industrious and comparatively prosperous.
There is plenty of work going on to capture the tourist dollar. It’s in the streets surrounding the huge Vinh Trang pagoda (temple or shrine) where gigantic Buddhas keep watch over those within (don’t bother praying to him unless you speak Vietnamese – he may be omnipotent but in Vietnam he speaks only one tongue). It’s in the small coconut and honey ‘‘factory’’ where lollies or confectionary are cooked in giant woks before being hand wrapped. It’s in local boatmen taking tourists for a 20-minute paddle up a small tributary and into the jungle (nothing felt quite so Vietnam War-ish on the trip).
In a country where the average wage is US$150 a month it should come as no surprise.
It is the rainy season on the Mekong, which lasts from May to October, and in the 30-plus degree equatorial heat, the daily afternoon downpour cooling the air considerably is a blessing.
Having never cruised before, it was pleasant to learn that sitting at the top deck bar, watching great forks of lightning in the distance and torrential rain slam down while meandering up the river is a highly pleasant way to pass the time of day. The beer is cold, the service great, the company good, and the sunsets (well, one sunset anyway) spectacular.
Here’s a tip though. If you plan to head to the top of Sam Mountain, near Chao Doc on the Vietnam-Cambodia border, make sure you time it right and go on a day when the cloud won’t ruin the view.
It does feel a long way from ‘‘a river that refuses to be civilised’’ though. Lazy stretches of relaxing on the river interspersed with neat excursions to the shore are enjoyable, but quite comfortable.
The crossing into Cambodia happens overnight. Briefed on the boat the afternoon before by a Cambodian guide, there is a real sense that the intensity is about to go up a notch.
It’s first observable on the river itself. As it becomes largely a wide, single channel of water the traffic rapidly dries to a trickle. The scenery changes too – the bankside
dwellings are less numerous and more ramshackle, there is more agriculture with rice paddies sweeping away into the distance.
The Kingdom of Cambodia is a nation repairing and rebuilding – its economy and its heart.
It may be a democracy, but the Cambodian guides are quick to share tales of corruption, and massive inequality in a country of about 15 million people. The Prime Minister was a former captain of the Khmer Rouge. And barely days before, vocal anti-Government critic Kem Ley was gunned down in a Phnom Penh petrol station.
The Cambodian capital is an intriguing place. Much smaller than Ho Chi Minh city, it has a vibrancy and an authenticity in its centre that the Vietnamese goliath lacks, despite its multitudes.
The observation is a reminder in itself of the strange differences between two countries so close geographically. The Cambodians seem a happier, quieter, more simple people than the Vietnamese. There is a sense they are willing – for now – to accept corruption and inequality because it is infinitely better than the blood soaked hell from which they only recently emerged.
Where the Vietnamese spent the post-World War II period fighting for its independence, the Cambodians spent much of the same time slaughtering each other.
Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime reigned from 1975-1979. In that short time, up to 3 million Cambodians, (from a population of 8 million at the time) were killed.
Standing on the Killing Field at Choeun Ek, where chickens scrabble through shreds of bones from the thousands killed there, or in the cells at the S-21 prison and torture centre in Phnom Penh, where blood is still spattered on the walls, it is not too hard to imagine one has found a deranged psycho at the heart of the river after all.
In the heartland of Cambodia, away from the city and the madness there is ample time to reflect on the horror of the country’s recent past. It’s quieter, more peaceful, but the pain remains close to the surface.
At a tiny school in a tiny village based around a silver works, where silverware bought at markets is melted down and recrafted by hand into jewellery; on a buffalo cart ride, through rice paddies that stretch away to the horizon, to a rarely visited temple; or cycling through a village to a simple one-woman pottery factory, where she uses only clay, rudimentary tools, her hands, and knowledge passed down from her mother to create her livelihood, it is easy to see the beauty of the country, easy to understand why its residents are prepared to accept an imperfect peace.
The remnants of the Khmer Rouge sickens the soul. Fortunately, the simple loveliness of the country aside, Cambodia offers another ‘‘must-see’’ attraction. One that uplifts and bears testament to the power of humanity at its best.
Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument in the world. Almost 1000 years old and Hindu in origin, its magnificent temples are surely as captivating as any feat of humanity in the world.
Near the city of Siam Reap – a city that is like an Asian Gold Coast or Queenstown, and easily the most affluent place on the Cambodian leg of the trip – watching the sun rise over its towers and walls is well worth the early wake up and the jostle with thousands of tourists from around the world who have come to marvel.
You’d find it difficult to not find something to marvel at – the intricate designs that cover its extensive walls, or the feat of using elephants to lift enormous rocks 65m above the ground to build the main towers – just two things worth a ponder.
If there’s a sour note to Angkor Wat though, it’s in the knowledge that, with thousands of visitors each forking out US$20 a head daily, someone somewhere is making a mint, and it doesn’t appear to be trickling down fast.
There was no apocalypse at the end of this trip – no Heart of Darkness. It may not have been the war epic expected but enough remains, particularly in Cambodia for a traveller seeking glimpses of the past to stay excited.