In Transit: Chou Doc to Phnom Penh by River

Since Can Tho was a specific destination for us, as was Phnom Penh, the trip from Chou Doc to Phnom Penh occupies its own segment of my memory.

It started with our waiting for a tuk-tuk that I thought may never come. Eventually we got down to the docks and boarded a cool zippy tourist motor/speed-boat thing that had almost the exact same white folks that were on our bus from Can Tho to Chou Doc. Most of us were tying to get from Vietnam to Siem Reap, the tourist town next to the ancient capitol of Angkor and staging point for the temples thereby. We were in that group as well, but, with our single night in Phnom Penh, we didn't need to rush off to the bus station like almost everyone else on out little boat-bus. In any case...

At the river dock in Chou Doc someone had built a mostly serious monkey bridge over the water lilies that was designed to make it easy to water the potted flowers that are chilling there. I'm not sure the following picture either makes sense or does the scene justice:

From the other side of the rusty gangway this tiny canoe seemed lonely:

We finally left and got going, and I ended up taking this sweeping distant shot of Chou Doc, making it resemble a place far more exciting and romantic that it ever felt in the sixteen hours we spent there:

Along the river we sped for a few hours, and then we stopped at a large, Marxist river cube. Turned out it was the exit point for Vietnam. We were shuffled off the boat, into the cube, handed over our paperwork (and photos and cash), and waited. Not for too long, though; that was nice.

As we headed back to the boat, I snapped a picture of it. Below is our river bus:

Like the photo from February 2012's View from an Autobus, I leaned out the window and tried taking a similar picture:

It wasn't too long before we made it to the Cambodian entrance control. This was a leafy spot on the river bank instead of the drab river cube. We all again got off the boat and walked over to a waiting spot. I played with the sad mongrels that, eh, "lived" on the complex...Corrie took pictures. Hers are better than mine, but what can you do?

Vietnam and Laos are socialist/communist republics, while Thailand and Cambodia are monarchies. I'm not sure, but that may have something to do with how the entrance/exits felt while you experienced them. The Cambodian Bassac River entrance point was relaxing and beautiful. Corrie learned that the (wealthy) family of white folks speaking Spanish were from Mexico, and the eldest daughter worked and lived in Sacramento.

I couldn't have made that up had I wanted to...

In any case, soon enough we were back on the boat and back cruising along the river towards Phnom Penh. I napped, scarfed the free grub they provided, tried napping some more...Corrie took hundeds of pictures of villagers down at the river's edge doing villager-lifestyle things...they're pretty cool pictures.

Eventually as we made our way to where the Bassac and the Mekong conflate, we knew we were there. I took a handful of pictures of strictly Phnom Penh stuff, and have included only the following picture from the boat ride: the river entrance to the royal palace:

We did visit the palace, and that experience and photo collection should be coming up next, along with the other Phnom Penh material, of which there was probably too much. We tried to make up for only getting a single day in the Cambodian capitol by cramming each one of the twenty-three hours we spent there with necessary stuff (sleep was necessary, for sure...).