You know it's a relaxed journey when the boat driver is not only steering with his feet on the wheel, but reading a book at the same time. The Mekong Delta may be the place where Vietnam grows most of it's rice (and Vietnam trails only Thailand in global rice exports, so that's no small feat) but you wouldn't have known it from the pace of our boat tour through the area.
The trip started in Cambodia and ended in Vietnam, but even the border crossing was relaxed: we pulled up in our tiny boat and grabbed lunch in the no man's land restaurant while we waited for everything to be ready. There was the small matter of one girl having the wrong visa, but even that problem disappeared with a $5 bill.
On the other side, our boat took us through tiny canal towns that make the Mekong, despite being rural, one of the more densely populated places in the country.
After a night in the border town of Chau Doc our boat trip went on to the nearby floating houses, homes that double as workplaces for the inhabitants, with living space above the water and fish farming below.
The pace of life here may be slow but, as in the rest of Vietnam, changes are coming fast. Many of the floating houses sported tv antennas, a luxury that our guide linked to The country's two child policy: "Less babies, more (money for) TVs!" (And, she suggested, TVs also breed smaller families: "The man want to do something and the women say 'No! Watching the TV!'")
Whatever the reasons, life on the Mekong is modernizing quickly but, while things are still relaxed, I'm in no hurry to leave.
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