mekong meanders

i love the mekong! ariel and i spent the day on the main branch of the river and a number of its tributaries as we traveled from the capitol of cambodia to chao doc in vietnam. our trip to asia is short, only a month (other travelers we have talked to express outright shock that we are only traveling for one month!) and so we aren't going to have as much time in the mekong delta as we'd like. rather than taking a bus from cambodia to saigon, we chose the slower route and took a boat.


we learned a fascinating thing about the mekong and the river's effects on cambodia: at phnom penh, the tonle sap river meets the mekong. normally, the tonle sap river drains the tonle sap lake (the largest fresh lake in southeast asia) into the mekong. however, in the rainy season, the mekong swells and actually causes the tonle sap to change the direction of its flow, so it is flowing back into the tonle sap lake. when ariel and i were standing on the riverfront in phnom phen (once again, waiting out a monsoon rain under a ledge) we thought the river looked like it was flowing the wrong way. fascinating!



the tonle sap is a very important fresh water resource and spawning area for fish. we heard that fish migrations from lake tonle sap restock fisheries as far away as china. the worry here is that dams upriver will alter the level of the mekong's flow to the extent that the rainy season will not reverse the flow of the tonle sap river, and thus the tonle sap lake will not swell to the necessary level. the lake is also suffering from increased use of pesticides by farmers around the lake and silting as more forests are cut and erosion increases.


we followed the mekong (or actually, we followed the lower branch, the bassac, as it splits after phnom penh) into vietnam on a very, very loud wooden boat with a handful of other toursits. twenty minutes in, it started to pour and tarps dropped down over the open sides of the boat. ariel and i, by luck, had the best spot. despite the tarps, everyone else got soaked. the border crossing went smoothly and we had lunch with a lively girl from the netherlands we'd been bumping into since angkor wat. after lunch we boarded another boat and left the mekong to travel down a maze of tributaries and canals, eventually dropping us in chao doc.

the life along the river was beautiful and simple. many people lived up on the steep red banks above the river in simple wooden houses. the houses were brightly painted and while some were on stilts, most were on the ground. we saw children and old farmers bringing their water buffalo to the water, a very steep descent for the buffalo. a lot of life takes place on the river, but there are no floating homes of the main branch of the mekong in that area because the water is too rough and changes so dramatically. looking down any of the side streams or canals, we could see houses overhanging the river on stilts and floating homes. along the edges of the river were fish traps.

we saw a lot of fish farming (catfish) and people raising hundereds of ducks and geese. little girls played on boats and washed clothes in the river and the boys had volleyball nets set up away from the edge of the canals. they strung huge fishing nets between their playing field and the river so as to not loose their ball.

arriving in chao doc we saw row after row of floating homes. they looked like they were floating on empty metal drums. ariel read that under each house, the people have suspended metal nets and raise fish under their homes. they toss their leftovers to the fish and the fish get to live in the natural water beneath their houses until they are dinner.