Embarkation at MY THO on the Mekong.
Our home for the next 8 days, the RV Mekong Pandaw, she is about a meter
wider than our Irrawaddy boat, the RV Orient and she was also longer
and had a deeper draft, but like the original Irrawaddy Flotilla steamers.
She also had a forward saloon which was located
where we had spent our open air cocktail hour(s) on the Irrawaddy.
The result of losing this ‘spot’ required us to slum it on the upper
deck, as you can see we managed to overcome this hardship,
settling down to cocktails, before dinner. Then down to the
dinning room below with our 31 fellow explorers.
As can be seen some very large ships come right up the Mekong.
A traditional rice boat being loaded with rice husks
at a modern rice processing factory.
The River was teaming with craft of all shapes and sizes,
this modern wharf was loading bagged rice into a small
traditional Mekong wooden trading boat and unloading
general cargo.
Note: the modern suction dredger in the foreground,
it will soon be off to Saigon.
To add to the river confusion every so often a small settlement would appear with
it’s wedding cake church and an assortment of ferry boats crossing the river.
All the churches that we could see looked immaculate.
We were rudely awakened the next morning by a great
commotion of clanging & banging just outside our cabin door.
The reason for this was a total mystery as we had moored
for the night, in mid river with not a thing in sight.
It turned out that this was one of the many dredging sites along the
river which were feeding the endless string of barges of fill being
used to lift Saigon above the flood levels of it’s adjacent paddies
which were being fast gobbled up by development.
They were the boats we had seen from roof of the Hotel Majestic
on the Saigon river front.
The noise was from the drag line which was perched on a flat deck pontoon.
The barges were all of steel and self propelled, they
varied considerably in both age and size.
This operation provided endless entertainment during breakfast
as we all tried to work out the hierarchy of who had preference for loading.
The second day involved a trip along the small Sadec Canel
The Canal was also home to a floating market.
The produce being offered for sale is fixed to the boats mast.
A straw hat indicates the boat is for sale.
Shops also line the river bank this is a pot shop.
The town also has its church of course.
A fully loaded rice husk boat.
As with the old London Hay Boats on the Thames, it looks just a little top heavy.
After landing at a builders merchants wharf we
walked down a footpath to a sweet factory.
Basically toffee, which starts as palm shugger which
is heated in a giant woke over a coconut shell fire.
It is then poured into long strip moulds which are cut into squares.
Each piece being wrapped by hand and the
finished product is sent all over Vietnam.