Cat & Mouse

Day 67: An Binh (VN) – Chau Doc (VN). Arriving in the little Mekong port of Chau Doc, Karen and I were totally exhausted. Whilst some of our tiredness could be attributed to our lack of sleep from the previous night the main factor was the sheer effort of travelling in these remote areas having left the luxury of the rail network and sealed roads long behind us.

Looking back to our earlier travelling on the Trans Siberian Express, we were clocking up as many as 900 miles in a single day. But our latest journey across the Mekong Delta from Ho Chi Minh City, a distance of just over 200 miles, had taken us two solid days of travelling to accomplish and had necessitated the use of: 1 service bus; 6 motor bikes; 2 passenger ferries; 3 mini buses; 2 junk boats, 1 rowing boat and a 5 mile hike. No wonder we were shattered!

Passing Phoenix Island, we learned of it's most famous resident - the 'Coconut Monk'', so named because of his single food diet. However, besides the monks obvious eccentricities lay a serious side; promoting reunification of the northern and southern Vietnamese people through peaceful means, infuriating successive South Vietnamese governments and leading to his imprisonment on several occasions. Such were his beliefs that he used to cage cats and mice together to prove his theory that arch adversaries can learn to get along together. “He obviously never met our cats”, Karen joked. “Putting Huffkin & Chudleigh in a cage with a load of mice would not be a good model for world peace!”