Mekong River Delta and finally some serious rain

So, before I go on to talk about our day trip on the Mekong river, I have to briefly mention our official introduction to the rainy season. After beginning to think this whole monsoon/"rainy season" talk was a bunch of baloney, our day of sight-seeing around Ho Chi Minh City was cut short by a serious downpour - so much that we invested in some ponchos just so that we could walk out of the War Remnants museum and go get some lunch. Since it basically rained very, very hard for the next couple of hours, we didn't see much else that day - however, it was hilarious to watch the evening commuters make it home in the rain and near-flooding (see video below):

The next day was the famous Mekong River Delta excursion, which in addition to some boating on the river and canoeing thru a narrow canal, included some typical "buy our local stuff" visits to the locals for everything from banana wine to coconut candy.

However, on a brighter note, we did get to see a bee farm and a live python (but we opted out of having a picture taken with it wrapped around our neck; in fact you couldn't get Mary Beth within 10 feet of it). Overall, the tour was good and it was neat to patrol the shores of the delta just like John Kerry did back in the day...

But, despite the tour's name, the tour seemed to include more time on land doing the above things than actually going down the river. Therefore, it was good that we luckily had the foresight to pay double and spring for the return to Ho Chi Minh City by boat instead of the standard bus. This ended up giving us some serious time on the river itself - almost four hours to be exact. Although it was much more than we anticipated (and to be honest, a bit much), I think I enjoyed this more than Mary Beth who was wishing we would have just stuck to the bus, particularly since our promised "speed boat" was a farce, instead being an old smoke-belching polluter, as you can see from this picture.

The next day, we got up ridiculously early to catch the all day bus to Siem Reap, Cambodia, which departed at 6am. The first leg of 6 hours to Phnom Penh went by just fine and fairly quickly, including an hour stop at the Cambodian border for passport control and the requisite $20 "pay-off" fee. Then, once we arrived at Phnom Penh, we had to switch to a more "local" bus, which of course was full when we boarded, leaving only the crappy 'hot' seats on the slightly-elevated back row available; I say hot seats because they were just above the engine, and therefore pretty warm. This, combined with barely any air conditioning and non-stop Cambodian music/drama shows/apparent comedies (I caught a couple people laughing) being played via DVD on the bus at the maximum volume (I couldn't hear my own music playing through the headphones), made this 2nd, 6 hour leg of our bus journey very, VERY long. But what even longer was once again the quality of the roads (not to mention all of the random livestock, people and other hazards in the road), which, in Cambodia, are just slightly better than in India, making it perhaps the bumpiest bus ride I ever hope to take in my life. Needless to say, by the time we arrived at the desolate, pitch-black shack they call a bus station, we were beat and just wanted to get to our hotel.