the mekong river

The Mekong river has many uses. For the people of the Mekong Delta, the river is a source of food, a place to go swimming, a place to was dishes, clothes, and themselves. The river is a floating market and a means of transportation. The river is also a bathroom, a place to throw garbage and dead animals, a place to throw anything the people no longer need or use. The river is the livelyhood of the Mekong Delta people and they're killing themselves with pollution.

Our boat trip into Vietnam was depressing. The air was thick with smoke from combustion engines and factories along the river. The skies were grey with rainclouds and heavy rains loomed on the horizon. After the rain, the sun broke through the clouds to reveal large crop fields and a more pleasant landscape devoid of smoke and factories. As we got closer to Chao Doc, we began to see small shacks along the rivers edge. It is common to see an entire family live in a one room shack. The bathroom is a whole in the floor and waste falls directly into the river. The same river where the poor drink and bathe. One of our guides explained that the poorest people live in boats on the river because the river is free and you don't have to buy property or pay rent to anchor a boat. Floating houses are common in fishing villages. Some villagers have fish farms directly underneath their houses. We visited one near Chao Doc. There are cages underneath the house-boat so the fish can't escape into the river. The fish are bread and raised in the cages and are fee a mixture of what looked like ground rice husks and pieces of rotting fish in pebble form, much resembling dog food. When you throw food into the water the fish go nuts.

My favorite part of the river so far was the floating Market. Boats float around selling all sorts of local produce. There are floating "restaurants" and "drink bars" where people literally have a fire on their boat and are cooking noodles and soup. When you see something you want, you flag down the boat. When the boat gets to you, it anchors to your boat and you float together while the transaction takes place.