July 8

July 8:  Cruising / Chau Doc / Crossing the Cambodian Border

Today was our final day in Vietnam.  We woke up to a beautiful sunrise and I opened the three-door-wide panoramic window to watch the river flow by.  Before breakfast we went up to the observation deck where we watched the river life float by including floating river homes and I took a nice shot of my lovely wife Kim.  And then we arrived in Chau Doc, one of the largest cities we've seen since Saigon and we were told it's one of the hottest cities in all of Vietnam which our morning walking excursion confirmed.  We boarded a sampan and went up the river and into some of the canals.  We saw farm life in action.  The most interesting story was when we saw some PINK ducks.  The people live on fish and duck.  And the ducks roam around freely, so to be able to distinguish who's ducks are who's ducks they "paint" their ducks with a powder mix!  We saw a lot of riverboats and bridges up and down the canals.  We docked and walked through the down to the base of Sam Mountain to a temple.  Here the "mother" is the most revered and worshiped of all deities in Vietnam.  We are told that at the height of the year's worship as many as a million people will come to lay an offering.  We took a group photo of our "sticky rice family" as our Vietnamese guide, Chung, has termed us as today is his final day with us (we get a Cambodian guide for the duration tomorrow).  And then we walked inside the temple.  We were told not to maintain contact with the goddess' eyes and to certainly NEVER take any photos inside.  But we could take pictures outside, which we did and got our photo taken.  We sailed back to where our ship was and walked through a huge open-air market before saying good-bye to Chung.  We boarded the Siem Reap and sailed up the Mekong.  About 2 pm we reached the Cambodian border.  It took about an hour and a half to be cleared (the authorities had to check all our passports - which the office had collected and took care of for us).  And then we spent the rest of the afternoon sailing up the Mekong.....noticeably less traffic on this side of the border.  We reached Phnom Pehn late in the evening and our Internet will be much stronger so I'll be able to return to posting photos for a couple days on our original web page!