Kelly and Quang's Global Roam

This morning we got up nice and early and got on a crowded van bound for My Tho. Upon reaching My Tho we would get on a boat for a two-day trip on the Mekong River, but first we had to get to My Tho.

What I didn't realize at the time was that Quang's mom was born and raised in My Tho. I'd heard her say the town's name, but her native pronunciation of it and my own internal, botched pronunciation of the same words, were so different from each other that I thought she was talking about someplace else. My mistake became apparent on the hour and a half van ride. Quang's mom talked and talked, first about her girlhood, second about her life in Saigon as a young single mother, and third about leaving Vietnam, about those who called her crazy, about those who said she wouldn't make it, and about those complete strangers who offered a helping hand along the way. Eventually, tears brimmed in her eyes and she sat silent.

There was nothing I could say, or nothing I could think of to say, that would make the situation easier. And the thing was, I didn't think it could ever be "easier". The best I could do was sit and listen and offer a tissue. Which is what I did.

It was already oven not when we got out of the van at My Tho. We filed into a small, wooden boat and puttered out into the Mekong River. The Mekong River begins in Tibet, winds through China, Myanmar, Laos, along the border of Thailand, through Cambodia and finally into Vietnam where it ends in the South China Sea. By the time the Mekong reaches Vietnam, it has split itself into two branches. By the time it reaches the sea, it has split itself into six or seven branches. Every year, the river deposits so much silt and sediment as it empties into the sea that Vietnam's land mass continues to grow.

As our little boat swung out into the mighty, mighty Mekong, we were impressed with how wide the river was - and we were only in one arm of it. The water was an ugly, dusty brown. We couldn't tell if the water was simply reflecting the color of its muddy bottom or if it was dirty. A little of both, we decided as we looked over the boat's edge and watched orange peels, wedges of watermelon, and pineapple tops bob by.

The Mekong is a living, breathing, working river and this floating garbage was a constant reminder that millions of people depend on these waterways. Homes on stilts lined the main river banks. These houses were shoddy constructions of corrugated tin and squares of plywood. They stood on stilts to avoid the river's daily rising and falling tides, not to mention its rainy season flooding.

After tooling down the river for a while, our boat pulled into a thin, watery alley. Long ago, residents carved a series of canals into the Mekong Delta creating hundreds of small islands. The river was further channeled into irrigation ditches to keep rice paddies wet and fertile. Cruising the canals was slightly cooler than cruising the main river branch. Here, palms shot out of mucky banks and swayed in the breeze, offering some shelter from the scorching sun.

It was in these back water alleys that we caught a glimpse of these strange half-fish-half-lizard animals. They were the size of a large fishing minnow, but instead of front fins, they had front feet. They looked like some sort of tadpole, moved fast and ducked in and out of holes in the muddy banks. We also got a chance to wear some conical hats, Vietnam's seemingly national symbol. We welcomed the hats' wide circle of shade that fell over our necks and faces. I was even a little reluctant to give mine back.