Mekong delta

There's no way roads in inner Southeast Asia are worse than those in the Mekong delta. No fucking way. A six-hour ride on literally non-existent roads for more than half of the journey - alternating between a hardly smooth surface of large rocks and deep potholes with dusty paths and muddy tracks. And whoever designed these roads clearly never thought about the gradual incline to and from bridges.


I'm surprised my stomach withstood it all despite a lunch of soup noodles - even the conductor stuck her head out of the window to throw up. Irony: foundations of new tarred roads and wide bridges being laid down parallel to the 'road' we were on throughout the entire journey by labourers.


The Mekong delta is bewildering even when viewed at sea level - what more from above. It's one wide expanse of lowland divided erratically into little islands by the Mekong river which fans out into the region. There are no mountains to behold, just flat farmland as far as the eye can see - obscured by tall trees every now and then.


Throughout the journey, we cross countless bridges spanning the little tributaries of the Mekong river, bordered by little villages that live off them. At the ferry crossing, the land looks as if it had been torn asunder and the sea rushed into the gash and churned up the silt to form the great brown river.


The harvest season must've just ended. The fields are mostly bare and the smog and the smell of smoke in the air suggest the burning of chaff. I see more churches here - apparently thanks to the missionaries who tried to save the poor souls of the tribes who live in godlessness far away from the civilization of big cities. Development is approaching, slow, but everywhere you go, you see the sign of the New Messiah.


So I'm sitting in this bus, and I'm thinking, 'This is going to be worse than Chongqing and Dazu.' There, at least I had a map (not for Dazu) and I could probably save my life with Chinese. But here, I don't have a map and I speak only three phrases of Vietnamese. This is going to be hard and will most likely be the toughest leg of this trip this time around.


The thing about sunsets is that they're very brief. The sun puts on its show just within that small window of a few minutes; just before it dips completely below the horizon, throwing red splashes all over the darkening sky. And for a brief moment, it's all over and the world is plunged into darkness.