Tonight I am in Chau Doc, Vietnam, near the border with Cambodia. Tomorrow I will go by boat on the Mekong River to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I booked a package in Saigon which takes me to Cambodia with a tour of the Mekong Delta and hotel en route. We leave tomorrow morning at 7 and arrive in the afternoon at 5. It will be a long boat trip but surely interesting.
Having enjoyed being in Vietnam for the past two weeks, I have some parting thoughts. First, if this is communism, what is so bad about it? The country seems very prosperous, people well dressed, businesses booming, hardly any beggars on the street. I have been told there is repression of some ideas, but I have watched CNBC, HNN, American Idol and many great American movies on television. The internet does not have any restrictions that I have found. Anyway, that is my take on the communist situation. Second, their money called Dong is really confusing. One dollar equals 20000 Dong, so to convert currencies you have to drop 4 zeroes and divide by 2. All those zeroes get really problematic, and when I spend 10000 Dong for a Coke it feels like a lot more than 50 cents. Third, these people can cook! Fourth, I want to come back here.
Well, I have an early wakeup call tomorrow and so I will close. Sorry not to have any pics to post today but I think I had some setting wrong on my camera. The Mekong River is very picturesque so hope to be able to show it here.
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