Asia Hotel Can Tho

Thursday 1st October - Mekong Delta (My Tho & Can Tho)

Getting out of Ho Chi Minh in the morning took ages due to all the traffic but we soon found ourselves out on the highway. This 'highway' was not up to our standards in the western world - it was a two lane road with large potholes and still is plagued by the numerous slow motorbikes buzzing around everywhere. At My Tho we hopped onto a long boat and headed across the channel and into the Delta to and visit some of ...

... sous le casque pour eviter les rayons qui trouvent le chemin entre le masque et le casque. Les pieds dans les ballerines sont caches par des chaussettes. Les bras, sous le t-shirt manches courtes seront caches sous des gants sur toute la longueur du bras. Cela ne suffisant pas, un sweet shirt a capuche est ajoute sur le tout pour eviter tout rayon inopportun.
Dans ce pays baigne de soleil et de chaleur unegrande ...

... what they are selling by attaching an example to a bamboo stick at the front of the boat (have got some photos to put up when I have time). It is pretty much unorganized chaos there are boats everywhere big and small all trying to squeeze past one another!

We then went to another smaller fruit market where our driver bought this strange grapefuit ...

The day started at 5am again. Even though it was so early, the town was already bustling with people. We found a taxi to take us to another small town down the river where there was another floating market. The road there was mostly paved but there were several one lane (or at least what we would consider to be one lane) gravel or dirt paths or wooden bridges. The one lane path did not stop anyone on a motobike (scooter ...

... taking photos' throughout and generally trying not to get involved, he did pipe up when the guide said that by praying we would have a happy prince or princess within the year !!! All over Vietnam people have asked us if we are married, Lan didn't seem to know the words girlfriend and boyfriend and spent the whole trip referring to us as husband and wife ("here give this flower to your wife"). At one point when Lan was pushing us to tell him when ...

... excited by some action in their neighborhood and came running to the canal edge waving like mad yelling "hello, hello!!!!" Went to a fruit plantation where they grew loads of differnet fruits which was also vey interesting. One paticular one is "milk fruit", a grrn fruit about the size of a kiwi fruit with a soft flesh that really does taste like milk. The last stop of the day was at a big tourist rest stop which was amazingly fresh and clean with vast garden and lawn areas. In ...

... cruise in our itinerary and we showed it to him. He then just laughed and said 'this company is bulls**t.' Steam is coming out of my ears and blood is now boiling at this point but I stayed calm, just. He then calls the travel agent we booked through and the usual conversation ensued of them not understanding me and me trying to listen/understand them whilst bouncing up and down on a bumpy road with a broken mobile phone signal. In the end the phone cut dead and we thought ...

... an interesting backwater route back to Can Tho. There were lots of kids waving, banana trees, water hyacinthes and veggie plots including runner beans along the way. We also got to cross a monkey bridge! These are wooden bridges with a thin piece of wood you have to balance your feet on and just one handrail. Once the wood becomes mossy and damp it can be a bit hairy! Apparently and perhaps unfortunately the government has a goal of replacing all these with concrete ...

... to get... then we came to a local bridge and almost lost the top of the boat! We had a really good trip seeing the lives of the Mekong people and were really looking forward to our second trip to that afternoon via another form of river transport - an express speedboat to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) through more of the beautiful Mekong Delta......