Our driver and English speaking guide picked us up in a really nice Toyota SUV; we felt like royalty! We listened to the history of Saigon and Vietnam, with dates and dynasties thrown in every direction! But overall, Dat was a very well informed guide and it was a good day. We drove about 2 hours then boarded a boat and cruised the Mekong River. This river is “garhugic”! It has over 2500 branches and runs about 2500 miles.

The current is very swift; the river very strong. Unfortunately, there is also a lot of garbage floating around. And the islands of water hyacinth don’t help; they trap the garbage.

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We visited a rice paper making family

a puffed rice making family

a rice vinegar making family, and a coconut candy making family.

Then we hopped aboard a long tail boat and the man rowed us around for about an hour….exhausting work. They have an interesting way of rowing: they stand and use both arms in a rowing machine motion. The sun came out, and in the backwaters, the wind stopped and it was so stinking hot!!!

Our lunch stop was at a broken down cement wharf with only one other boat tied up there. They guided us to a private bamboo shelter and served us a phenomenal lunch. The food just kept coming. We asked our guide afterwards if this was normal or was it for the tourists. Every where we go, the quantity of food is crazy. He said that is what the Vietnamese do. We had spring rolls, and a chicken dish, Vietnamese pancake, and a whole fish and some green vegetable soup. Then the owner came over and we toasted each other with longan rice wine.

We also queried our guide about the hundreds and hundreds of restaurants along the road and all of them are empty! He said that for some, they do their major business on the weekend and just hope for some business during the week. For others, they are retired with no pension and it is just a way to earn a little money. That was the case with our lunch hosts. There was only 4 people who ate lunch there that day!

We also passed by a floating market, a really local one. There were only a dozen boats selling and whatever they had hanging from a pole on the front of their boat was what they were selling. If the pole was empty, they were sold out. Many of these people live on their boats.

Back to the bigger boat and about another hour on the water to the car and an hour drive to Can Tho, our home for 2 nights. Can Tho is a nice river town, bigger than we expected. It also seemed more progressive, even more progressive than , say, Saigon. We saw many Vietnamese couples holding hands which we did not see elsewhere. The fashions were more modern; men wore shorts. They do not wear shorts north of here. And we saw a few obviously gay guys dressed to the teeth which we also did not see elsewhere. We also noticed that the girth of the people, in general, was growing from up north. Hmmmm????

We walked around some; bought a duffel bag for the overflow souvenirs, toured a couple of temples. And we got caught up on the blog; pretty low key overall.

So at 7:00am we hear some pretty loud musak which is coming from a speaker right outside our door. We had made the mistake of having an iced coffee at about 6pm last night and paid for it at bedtime. So we were pissed to be woken up so early. I asked at the front desk about it and they said when they have a guest checking out, they use it as an alarm for the guest!!! I told her that was a terrible idea and they should stop doing it!!

En route to the next town, we visited a crocodile farm; the stuff nightmares are made of!

A few hours drive brought us to Chau Doc, our last stop in Vietnam. We followed the Mekong the whole way and got a good taste for the varieties of ways that the people’s lives are tied to the river….good and bad, richer or poorer. For lunch, we walked across the street from our hotel and came across the first Vietnamese restaurant in our 35 days here, that no one spoke English and the menu was all in Vietnamese. Google Translate helped out and we got out order in. Once again they set the first dish in front of Buzz so he started eating and you guessed it; it was mine. I get dibs on half of his dinner tonight! They also served the french fries with a side of what looked like butter and salt. So I sprinkled the salt on the fries only to find out it was sugar!!!!!

Well, Chau Doc is a pit. I have no idea why anyone would stop here except for the fact that it is where you catch the boat to get into Cambodia. It is the dirtiest town we have seen in Vietnam; their fruit and vegetable market is weird and people stared at you like they were Children of the Rice (like Children of the Corn but more Asian). We ended up going back to our hotel because the two decent looking restaurants we found were really expensive and when we got back to our hotel, it was really expensive. If you ever visit Vietnam and are heading into Cambodia, take a later boat and just stop for a few minutes in Chau Doc.

We had booked this Mekong Delta trip through a travel agency and our transportation to the ferry was waiting for us (didn’t get a picture on the confusion, stock photo, sorry!)….no way.  And they wanted to put all our luggage in with us!

I had no idea how to even get into one of those things. So we ended up spending more to get a taxi to the dock. Our boat trip was fine. We traveled for about 2 hours then had to stop at a Vietnam passport check station. Everything in Vietnam, except for Cha Doc, has been clean and nice. Except for Chau Doc and this passport station. It was gross! Then back on the boat for 5 minutes and another stop at the Cambodian Passport station. We had already gotten our Visas in Hanoi so we were done in minutes but had to wait for the rest of the 50 passengers to get theirs. Then we were on the Mekong for another 2 hours or so to Phnom Penh.