Chau Doc

Chau Doc is a little place that is surrounded by fishing villages that float on the Mekong. Houses have fish farms that are underneath the floating floor, constantly swishing underneath. The village woman are boat taxi drivers, paddling people up and down the river with long oars in little wooden boats. A Cham Muslim Community lives happily in their traditional ways. Teaching kids the language and Muslim scripture.
The markets are buzzing with people who are intrigued to see Westerners and offer us local delicacies. We sampled all sorts of foods that were both amazing and disgusting alike. The markets were buzzing along with motorbike and cyclists as well as foot traffic. Sometimes there was barely enough room to walk, yet alone squeeze motorbike laden with produce through. It still amazes me how things just seem to work here in Asia. People are so peaceful amongst the chaos and the erratic movement of everything has a strange organization.
To cross a street in to a maze of peak hour traffic would be suicidal in Australia. Here you just simply walk on to the road, with traffic passing all around, and they simply go around you. Sometimes I hold my breath as I feel the rush of air from the cars, Bicycles and Cyclos and wonder how the hell I wasn't killed.
I sat in a gutter with some people I met on the boat, names I don't even remember, and we ate Rambutans and watched the buzz go by. Children sat and pointed at us and our strange piercings and tattoos. We communicated by hand gestures and laughed at our translations of them. It's funny how people who do not speak each others language can simply be happy to sit and stare. There's some comfort in strageness of this gesture.