The Beauty Of The Mekong River

Traveling down the Mekong river is a very rewarding and beautiful experience. The river is filled with rock formations, there are rocks everywhere at times its like floating through the dynamited mountain roads of Western Canada, on each side of the boat the rocks can rise up 2 stories tall.

The other thing about the Mekong that I have not seen on other rivers is the amount of sand that lines the shoreline. In many places the sand extends for hundreds of meters in each direction, sometimes you see sand ridges that are 6 to 10 feet tall.

Another unique feature was the various hill tribe villages that you passed along the way. You would be floating by and see up on some high hill (almost mountain like) a series of wooden or grass type homes. Often there would be people walking cattle or water buffaloes on a small path along a mountain hill. The other thing that was quite cute was maybe 10 or so times there would be naked children bathing at the rivers age, they would jump up and down and wave at the passing boats.

The smoking and drinking on the boat got tiring but seeing the wonderful Mekong and catching glimpses of hill tribe peoples lives was very rewarding, the positives made up for the negatives.