Dong Xuyen Hotel Mekong Delta

... music, all I can say is their ears must hear something different to us or else their taste is very strange - but it was good that we got the chance to see it.

Next stop was where the coconut monk lived, from what I could tell he set up a form of buhism on an island and had 7 wives, we had a stroll around and got to feed crocodile, I'm yet to find out if they actually live in the wild in the Mekong

We stopped at Mr Ling's for lunch which involved another massive fish and ...

... Mothers and the Lady of the Pagoda.

Lan took us to show us where he lived - this was a bit of a shock. It was half the size of our bedroom at home and 5 people lived there. Chris couldn't even fit through the door it was that low. Its pretty appalling that someone who as worked all their lives as an interpreter for the yanks, an electrician and now a tour guide (for a tour we paid a small fortune for - someone somewhere is getting rich!!) lives in these conditions ...

... was a tour on a boat to some fish market, and one at half 4 on a motorbike up the mountains. I REALLY wanted to do the motorbikes!! No one else really showed an interest in doing it and Ruth had said 'oh well have fun dying!'. Jenna didn't come, but the couple- Deb and Chris did thank God- didn't really fancy going by myself and a load of locals up a mountain at sunset. It was rather terrifying! Didn't feel very stable and the city was mental- there ...

... Floating villages, floating markets, bamboo scaffolding, traditional practises still have first place in the Mekong world. Although it seems to be a tough life, like in Saigon, the adults still smile to visitors, the kids wave and shout out ‘hello!’ to anyone vaguely western looking and for the most part as honest as they come (slight over charging for the walking ATMs is to be expected).....

... br>
We stopped first at a large Chinese temple. After removing our sandals and briefly meditating at the entrance (at least that's what Lan did), we walked around gazing above and around. The interior was very ornamented; walls and ceiling encrusted with carvings, dozens of long coils of burning incense hanging from above. Inside each of these bell-shaped spheres dangled a small piece of cardboard-backed paper on which had been written prayers from a supplicant. Lan told us ...

... market
fish farm
riding bicycle in the fish village
rice noodle factory
honety tea and cocunut candy factory
tropical friut tasting with tranditional music
crocodile farm
sleep. sleep. sleep on the slow boat to the border

... for 5,000 dong (around 30p!) As tempting as that was, we had agreed to get the bike back so we headed back to Chau Doc. Feeling quite confident after my in-at-the-deep-end intensive motorbike driving course, I soon had the smile wiped off my face when I lost control of the bike going uphill round a sharp bend, nearly taking out a poor, stratled-looking vietnamese man in the process. Luckily he seemed not to mind too much, and t prvded great amusement for a group of young boys passing by ...

... contemplating on what was being said. After we finished, we impressed with one of two words of Vietnamese that we have learned and walked back to the boat; stopping off and buying some coconuts along the way (it was quite funny seeing the woman cut open a coconut which sprayed its contents right into her face). Anyway that was our lunchtime drinks sorted.

It was now lunchtime. The crew had secretly turned our living room into a nice dining ...

Ok, I might start to get a bit soppy in this entry (and the next) if so, please send me a virtual slap. I had a bit of a busy day crossing the border from Cambodia to Vietnam. There was a direct bus from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City which took 6 hours but that was far too easy for me as I wanted to follow the great Mekong river to the end of it's journey. I took one normal bus for a few hours south and then swapped into a minivan to the border. The ...

... some of the villages along the river bank. We got to see lots of the exotic fruits growing in the wild and crossed some of the extremely rickety bridges the local use to get from one side of the river to another! That night, after sampling many of the weird and wonderful fruits on offer at the markets, Declan decided it was time to get to grips with some real local delicacy and sampled his first snake curry....