Matt and Milly do South East Asia: Vietnam cont... The Mekong Delta

1- 4 March

After crossing the border, Kampot Tours didn't seem to have any plan to get us to Chau Doc, they dropped us at the bus station in Ha Tien and pointed at a blue local bus, looked ok from the outside but once we got on we realised it was a really cranky old bus with shot suspension and rattled like you wouldn't believe!

We were only going 15 mins before the driver pulled into a petrol station and said 'we wait here 45 mins for more people'. There was a lady selling cold drinks out front with tiny plastic chairs to sit on (like kids size, they seem to have that a lot!). When Matt stood up the chair went with him...haha how we laughed. Well, I did anyway.

There was only us and two Vietnamese on the bus for the 3 hour trip so Matt could smoke out the window. It was so bumpy, if you sat in the back seat it would throw you a foot and a half into the air! Matt managed 45 min of this and then had a headache, so moved to the middle of the bus. The scenery was amazing, the road to Chau Doc follows one of the river paths up through the Mekong Delta, the road was incredibly straight.

It's hot alright

Chau Doc is fairly un-touristy. We arrived late afternoon and didn't see another white face. We found a nice little hotel next to the market called Ngoc Phu. The girl who ran it was called Mai, she had great English, and was super helpful (although the breakfast was terrible!). The first night we had a little wander. I don't think the locals in the market were that pleased to see tourists and weren't that friendly! The old women were spitting on the floor as you walked past. The place also absolutely stank of all the fresh and drying fish, and we were wondering if we had made a mistake coming here.

The Swastika is widely used in Buddhisim as an auspicious sign, it's stigmatised in Western

society because the Nazis adopted it.

The next day we avoided the market and actually, although Chau Doc couldn't really be called pretty, it had quite a nice feel about it and the locals were lovely. They are fascinated by Matt's beard! We had a little explore and met some great locals. We were sat in a little local coffee shop on the street and the locals were intrigued by Matt rolling his own fags. He had to roll one for the guy next to him so he could try it and then another one so he could take it home and show his family! We had another crowd form to watch us buy a hammock! Saw some fire flies from the balcony :-)

When you order a coffee you get a free pot of green tea

Funny that when we arrived we didn't like it much but when it was time to push off to Can Tho we were sad to leave. Mai booked the local FUTA Phuong Trang bus for us and we headed off to Can Tho having to watch Vietnamese comedy blaring at 100 decibels for the 3.5 hour trip! Luckily we had ear plugs, although they only help a little.

There isn't a great deal in Can Tho, apart from the stretch of river front that gets lit up by loads of neon lights in the evening and a huge statue of Ho Chi Minh.

Ho Chi Minh, Uncle Ho

Ho Chi Matt, Uncle Ho Ho Ho

The little resturant next to the hotel had fried rat with onions, snake and frog on the menu, yum.

Can Tho is really famous for its floating markets so we got up and left the hotel at 5.30am, still dark, and was met by a very smiley Vietnamese lady. She lead us down a tiny alley to a pier where her boat was docked, there was a coffee seller in the alley so we grabbed some to wake us up!, we climbed aboard and off we went. Looking behind we could see she was doing some leaf origami whilst steering the boat with her leg!

She took us an hour or so down river to the wholesale market with big boats selling pineapples, potatoes, tomatoes etc. We grabbed another coffee from a coffee boat. We then went 17km on to the smaller boat floating market where our lady re fuelled from a floating petrol station.

These markets were not the floating markets we'd imagined, they were really just a few boats selling fruits and also the odd coffee boat, but it was still very nice to see.

Neptune

Aaaaahh....Gwasshoppa

Smiley local

Coffee boat

On the way back we wound through the smaller canals and mangroves. We moored up at a restaurant and got shown around the garden, where they had various fruits growing. Our boat

lady pointed at one, saying in broken English 'Pap y bo, pap y bo', I tried to understand what she was saying and repeated 'pap y bo'. 'Yes' she agreed 'pap y bo'. Matt then walked past and said 'it's a Pineaplle you silly cow!'. There was me thinking it was a fruit I'd never heard of!, which actually, there are several of. That gave me the giggles for the rest of the day, in fact it still does, cos everytime we see a pineapple (which is pretty often) Matt says 'look, a Pap y bo'.