Come all Without, Come all Within / You'll Not See Nothing like the Mighty Mekong

Mekong Delta, Vietnam. The labyrinthine arms of the mighty Mekong snake and course across a palm fringed landscape, creating the extensive network of small islands, fishing villages, cobbled bridges and ferries that constitute life on the river. My mental image of the Mekong Delta has been always been a bit fanciful, mostly comprised of scenes from random movies that are occasionally pierced by a Martin Sheen voice-over.  So I was a bit discouraged when at first blush the Mekong Delta was so disappointing.

I am not sure if it was the massive shipping containers, the heavy industry dotting the shoreline or the profusion of irritable motorboats that first got my goat, but I am quite certain that watching people spill barrels of refuse directly into the river contributed to the foul taste in my mouth--well, that and the ashtray I mistook for my coffee mug during breakfast. I really have to stop getting up so early.

Something had to change. With my brother's trusty compass in hand, I oriented myself in the direction I desired to go, and went straight off the map. The good news is that the father I moved off the beaten trail, the more my mental image of the Mekong converged with reality. It turns out the Mekong was right there all along, and it has been wisely hidden from the greedy eyes of tourists and tour buses.

Trekky and I took to the back roads, the dirt and dust of uneven hard-pack filling our nostrils. With an eye out for Charlie (though everyone is named Nguyen) we pedaled through rural villages, past frustratingly green rice paddies, over wooden bridges, and straight into the heart of darkness--which, as it turns out, is quite sublime.

What experiences I had! No less than three people pulled up beside me and invited me to stop for a cup of coffee, a local black brew laced with sugar then dumped over ice. I chartered a wonderful trip on a skiff, wandering through narrow canals and backwater burgs to floating markets on the main arteries. In the town of Can Tho I watched a hundred kites take to the sky just before sunset--men, women, and children alike jockeying for position along a long riverfront roost.

But I am not one to just watch the action sail by. Which is why in Tra Vinh, when I spotted several youths hurtling themselves off a bridge into the river, I was easily enticed to join in. The assembled crowd cheered heartily as I stripped to my skivvies, stood precariously on the rail, and plunged without a moments hesitation. What fun. For an encore I raced a few teens across the river in a swim match, likely swallowed a few drops of river water that will burst from my stomach as a writhing alien three months hence, and jumped three more times into the fetid waters below. Not surprisingly, in all the excitement and hullabaloo none of my newfound friends remember to tell me that our actions--that of plunging off a narrow bridge thirty feet down into a busy shipping lane--were decidedly illegal. But I figured it out real quick when a quick shout of P'leet! Ph'leash! sent everyone scattering like cockroaches.


The two motorcycle cops thankfully ignored me as they chased away my pals, and I couldn't help but laugh as I buttoned up my shirt, still soaking wet, and pedaled off into the sunset towards my guesthouse.  There was no doubt about it, I had fallen in love with the Mekong Delta.