For three days we trekked up the Mekong Delta from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh. That is quite a trek and we covered a lot of miles. The miles by boat were wonderful; the miles by bus were tedious. We saw the largest floating market on the Mekong and did a homestay one night with a local family that involved us staying in small wooden, airy huts with mosquito nets next to the house. Life is simple for many people in the Delta and, while the house where we stayed would be considered very basic and lacking by North American standards, it was fairly well-appointed for the Delta region. It was a good experience to chat with the family members and eat meals with them (not to mention how we got there - in the dark, up a small river with big boats coming the other way, with no lights to speak of except a large flashlight our driver would shine every now and again!). Additional highlights from the Delta: drinking snake wine with a group of new friends, cycling around a town (and having the pedal on my bike fall off, meaning that Brian and I were abandoned for about 30 minutes), being paddled in dugout canoes, checking out crocodiles at a crocodile farm, watching the sun set near Chau Doc and eating Happy New Year cake with our group, watching weavers in a Muslim village and watching life roll by along the Mekong in Cambodia.
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