I have no dong
I never thought I'd say that. Yet, today, it came right out of my mouth at the border crossing into Vietnam today. We left Phnom Penh this afternoon at noon on a speed boat that took us two hours down the Mekong River. On the ride we met a bunch of foreigners travelling the region as well. There were a total of 8 of us on the boat. Here is how it broke down:
Couple from Melbourne
Couple from Switzerland (The woman works on the international convention on land mines)
One guy from Bangladesh living in London
One guy from Toronto
Everybody was amazingly nice and we bonded together as a group, not on the boat, but at the border crossing. Just to give some context, we exited Cambodia at their border crossing, and it took a total of 15 minutes. We then got back on the boat and travelled another 2 minutes at which point we hit the Vietnam border crossing. We exited the boat onto a steep river bank of mud, with partially carved stairs, where we immediately had to show our passports. We were then "greeted" by children with beer, soda, and snacky type things. Nobody bought anything because we didn't know what to expect.
We went into a very colorful intermiate room for a few minutes before we were shuttled off to a small outdoor type pagoda thingy. I had no idea that we would be there for the next two hours. The eight of us talked amongst each other and with the kids. (They have phenomenally good English.) The kids taunted us to buy food and drinks from them for the entire two hours. As we were leaving the kid made one final plea to me to buy something from him, to which I replied that I had no dong. (Yes, this is childish humor I know.) Finally our boat guy conductor person showed up and said we were all approved and we were ready to move on.
We arrived at Chau Doc about an hour later. We moved on to our hotel and settled into our room before heading to dinner. Our first dinner was composed of a beef salad with cucumber and mint, some sort of pork soup, pork and rice, some sort of mollusk thing, a very salty shrimp dish, and lastly lao ga ming dai (a fish soup that was similar to Pho, except that it is prepared at your table like a hotpot). [Mom, don't worry, I didn't eat any of the pork stuff. I am still a good jew.]
Couple from Melbourne
Couple from Switzerland (The woman works on the international convention on land mines)
One guy from Bangladesh living in London
One guy from Toronto
Everybody was amazingly nice and we bonded together as a group, not on the boat, but at the border crossing. Just to give some context, we exited Cambodia at their border crossing, and it took a total of 15 minutes. We then got back on the boat and travelled another 2 minutes at which point we hit the Vietnam border crossing. We exited the boat onto a steep river bank of mud, with partially carved stairs, where we immediately had to show our passports. We were then "greeted" by children with beer, soda, and snacky type things. Nobody bought anything because we didn't know what to expect.
We went into a very colorful intermiate room for a few minutes before we were shuttled off to a small outdoor type pagoda thingy. I had no idea that we would be there for the next two hours. The eight of us talked amongst each other and with the kids. (They have phenomenally good English.) The kids taunted us to buy food and drinks from them for the entire two hours. As we were leaving the kid made one final plea to me to buy something from him, to which I replied that I had no dong. (Yes, this is childish humor I know.) Finally our boat guy conductor person showed up and said we were all approved and we were ready to move on.
We arrived at Chau Doc about an hour later. We moved on to our hotel and settled into our room before heading to dinner. Our first dinner was composed of a beef salad with cucumber and mint, some sort of pork soup, pork and rice, some sort of mollusk thing, a very salty shrimp dish, and lastly lao ga ming dai (a fish soup that was similar to Pho, except that it is prepared at your table like a hotpot). [Mom, don't worry, I didn't eat any of the pork stuff. I am still a good jew.]
posted by Brian Katzman at 6:22 AM
1 Comments:
Interesting that it took 2 hours at the Vietnam border. Going the other way (Vietnam to Cambodia) we were done with Vietnam immigration in about 15 minutes (with 12 people). Sounds like you guys are having a great (and interesting) time.
9:38 AM
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