We got up early and were waiting for breakfast at 6:45am not realizing that the delivery of breakfast rolls does not arrive until about 7am. Once we ate it was a bit of a rush as the tour bus was leaving at 7:30 and we had to pick up our tickets for the ferry to Phu Quoc Island and flight back to Saigon. It was a relief when our tour guide Phu finally handed them over!
Our guide was good and spent much of the morning talking about Vietnam and the Mekong. Amongst many other things he enlightened us on the fact that 65% of the Mekong Delta is rice fields, that Vietnam exports the second highest amount of rice in the world, only Thailand exports more. He also pointed out some tomb stones in the middle of rice plantations. The name of the Mekong River in Vietnamese is, Sum Goh Lum which means river of dragons. He also referred to the toilet throughout the tour as the ‘Happy Room’.
There were also stories of the Vietnam war and how the Vietnamese fought smart against the enemy with better weapons. They used the high tide to ambush enemies, hiding in the water, breathing through bamboo canes. There is also a very smelly fruit in Vietnam (which is illegal on public transport), they used to hide in piles of straw, surrounded by this fruit, so that the enemy wouldn’t come near them.
After about two hours driving we arrived at the port. We all (its not a huge group, 20-25 people) piled
into the boat and cruised around the My Tho Islands. Before we even sat down a French couple asked Damien to pass them life jackets, stored in the roof, Bloody French! Our first stop was Unicorn Island where we visited a honey farm, drank tea and ate dried fruits. We then boarded row boats which were paddled by locals through the coconut canal. Now this was a nice canal or at least it would have been 20 years ago. The whole canal we were bumping into other tourist boats, or empty ones returning up the canal to get the next load. Our paddlers rowed at world record pace, seemingly wanting to ditch us to pick up his next load. Worse still were all the other drivers rowing up the canal with empty boats, saying to us things like ”hello, tip driver” and “money for your driver”. The canal was lovely, narrow and covered in palms and coconuts, it was the tourism that spoilt it for us. At the end of our journey, about 10 minutes, the driver looked at Christine and said “miny”. We climbed out of his boat. 
We took the big boat over to Ben Tre, another series of islands. Here we stopped at a coconut candy factory. As we walked in they gave us some to taste which was still warm. It was delicious, tasted like warm condensed milk with peanuts. We didn’t buy any, but did have a few samples, saw the production and even tried coconut wine and a wine with snakes in the barrel. Strong stuff! 
Onto another boat we headed for our lunch stop. The provided lunch was not great but there was the option to pay for additional mains! We were sitting with two Spanish guys so the four of us tried the Elephant fish, apparently special for the area. It was nice, grilled and served with rice paper and greens to make your own spring rolls. On this island we saw a buffalo in a canal, all you could see was his head, his whole body submerged, cooling off I guess. There were small fish walking in the mud and some locals digging out a canal with their bare hands, no shovels. Christine was also amused by the dogs in the restaurant, licking the empty plates in a big bucket ready to be cleaned. After lunch we returned to Unicorn Island for a stop to eat fruit and listen to some local music. Then it was back to the bus with a busy day almost done. The delta tour has been good, as you see a way of life we don’t have back home. Sadly it is now so touristy, and at times it felt like our guide was a bit pushy to buy things or donate to people. 
It was another two hours on the bus and we arrived at Can Tho. Tonight we are staying at a home stay. From town we were picked up, with 3 other from the tour and driven out of town. After about half an hour we were loaded, with all of bags, into a little gondola, and taken a bit further downstream. The home stay was a bit more like a guest house than we expected, we had our own cabin with bathroom, but still much nicer than a city hotel. For dinner we rolled our own spring rolls and were served a banquet of rice, noodles, fish, beans, tofu, rice paper, lettuce and herbs and our handmade spring rolls. In total there would have been about 18 people in the home stay, including a couple from Melbourne. When we learnt that the owner was taking us all for a village tour to the market at 6am in the morning, everyone turned in for an early night.
The next morning we were all up very early for a walk through the v
illage. We visited the small market with lots of smiling locals and bought a couple of donut type things with bean mix filling, these were ok but I don’t think we’ll get them again. Back at the accommodation breakfast was rushed because we had to meet up with the rest of the tour group. Back on a boat with all our luggage, then an interesting walk through a large local market. We were fascinated by the frogs that were tied to each other so they could not hop away, eels, fish, chickens, a tub of ducklings and chicks, all very alive, amongst fresh meat and vegetables. 
We were then herded back on the boat and headed for the Cai Rang floating market. We were expecting lots of small boats piled high with colourful fruit and vegetables with lots of local bartering for the best price. What we got was large house boats with their prod
uce displayed on the roofs. Our tour boat pulled up next to a pineapple boat so we all bought pineapple whilst waiting for our turn to take the long boat around the rest of the market. There were also boats pulling up next to ours trying to sell the rich tourists drinks. We finally caved and got a couple of cokes off a little boy who wanted 20,000 Vietnamese Dong ($1) but decided 15,000VD was a good price after Damien only offered 10,000VD. The long boat tour was ok, we did see a couple of transactions but it just didn’t have the hassle and bustle we expected. We think that we may have been to late in the day, it’s probably best at 6am. Still great to see, a concept we had never really heard of before coming to Asia. 
After the market we visited a Rice noodle factory where they make large thick rice paper which is then shredded into the rice noodles. The rice husk is bought to fuel the fires and once it is burnt it is sold at a large profit to farmers to fertilize their land. Also had some caged animals which we assumed were native to Vietnam and a pig farm full of fat happy pigs. Next was a Rice husking factory where they actually described the rice growing process which was interesting, then back on the boat, the bus and back to Can Tho for lunch.
The bus trip from Can Tho to Rach Gia was rather uneventful. It was interrupted by the occasional breaks, drop offs and changes in the blarring local television. It was either old awards nights or film clips of forlorn lovers in tricky love triangles. We finally arrived at Rach Gia about an hour and a half later than we expected. At the bus stop a couple of guys showed us a whole lot of business cards for hotels and wanted to take us there on their bikes for a huge charge. Most hotels have free transfers and we were much happier to take a taxi (which they told us ‘no taxi in Rach Gia’) as we have so much stuff. Damien cracked it and we walked out of the depot telling them we would walk the 4km to the hotel district. Low and behold there were heaps of hotels we could easily walk to and we realized we had nearly been stooged. We booked into one, then headed out for dinner. One thing we have loved about Vietnam is all the markets, they are everywhere, where Damien bought some bananas. We found a very local restaurant with the kitchen in the front where you could see all the ingredients. The staff tempted us in with an English menu and we enjoyed some very tasty noodles. The locals were entertained by Damien sitting on the little stools and struggling to get his legs under the table.
Our guide was good and spent much of the morning talking about Vietnam and the Mekong. Amongst many other things he enlightened us on the fact that 65% of the Mekong Delta is rice fields, that Vietnam exports the second highest amount of rice in the world, only Thailand exports more. He also pointed out some tomb stones in the middle of rice plantations. The name of the Mekong River in Vietnamese is, Sum Goh Lum which means river of dragons. He also referred to the toilet throughout the tour as the ‘Happy Room’.
There were also stories of the Vietnam war and how the Vietnamese fought smart against the enemy with better weapons. They used the high tide to ambush enemies, hiding in the water, breathing through bamboo canes. There is also a very smelly fruit in Vietnam (which is illegal on public transport), they used to hide in piles of straw, surrounded by this fruit, so that the enemy wouldn’t come near them.
After about two hours driving we arrived at the port. We all (its not a huge group, 20-25 people) piled
into the boat and cruised around the My Tho Islands. Before we even sat down a French couple asked Damien to pass them life jackets, stored in the roof, Bloody French! Our first stop was Unicorn Island where we visited a honey farm, drank tea and ate dried fruits. We then boarded row boats which were paddled by locals through the coconut canal. Now this was a nice canal or at least it would have been 20 years ago. The whole canal we were bumping into other tourist boats, or empty ones returning up the canal to get the next load. Our paddlers rowed at world record pace, seemingly wanting to ditch us to pick up his next load. Worse still were all the other drivers rowing up the canal with empty boats, saying to us things like ”hello, tip driver” and “money for your driver”. The canal was lovely, narrow and covered in palms and coconuts, it was the tourism that spoilt it for us. At the end of our journey, about 10 minutes, the driver looked at Christine and said “miny”. We climbed out of his boat. We took the big boat over to Ben Tre, another series of islands. Here we stopped at a coconut candy factory. As we walked in they gave us some to taste which was still warm. It was delicious, tasted like warm condensed milk with peanuts. We didn’t buy any, but did have a few samples, saw the production and even tried coconut wine and a wine with snakes in the barrel. Strong stuff! Onto another boat we headed for our lunch stop. The provided lunch was not great but there was the option to pay for additional mains! We were sitting with two Spanish guys so the four of us tried the Elephant fish, apparently special for the area. It was nice, grilled and served with rice paper and greens to make your own spring rolls. On this island we saw a buffalo in a canal, all you could see was his head, his whole body submerged, cooling off I guess. There were small fish walking in the mud and some locals digging out a canal with their bare hands, no shovels. Christine was also amused by the dogs in the restaurant, licking the empty plates in a big bucket ready to be cleaned. After lunch we returned to Unicorn Island for a stop to eat fruit and listen to some local music. Then it was back to the bus with a busy day almost done. The delta tour has been good, as you see a way of life we don’t have back home. Sadly it is now so touristy, and at times it felt like our guide was a bit pushy to buy things or donate to people. It was another two hours on the bus and we arrived at Can Tho. Tonight we are staying at a home stay. From town we were picked up, with 3 other from the tour and driven out of town. After about half an hour we were loaded, with all of bags, into a little gondola, and taken a bit further downstream. The home stay was a bit more like a guest house than we expected, we had our own cabin with bathroom, but still much nicer than a city hotel. For dinner we rolled our own spring rolls and were served a banquet of rice, noodles, fish, beans, tofu, rice paper, lettuce and herbs and our handmade spring rolls. In total there would have been about 18 people in the home stay, including a couple from Melbourne. When we learnt that the owner was taking us all for a village tour to the market at 6am in the morning, everyone turned in for an early night.
The next morning we were all up very early for a walk through the v
illage. We visited the small market with lots of smiling locals and bought a couple of donut type things with bean mix filling, these were ok but I don’t think we’ll get them again. Back at the accommodation breakfast was rushed because we had to meet up with the rest of the tour group. Back on a boat with all our luggage, then an interesting walk through a large local market. We were fascinated by the frogs that were tied to each other so they could not hop away, eels, fish, chickens, a tub of ducklings and chicks, all very alive, amongst fresh meat and vegetables. We were then herded back on the boat and headed for the Cai Rang floating market. We were expecting lots of small boats piled high with colourful fruit and vegetables with lots of local bartering for the best price. What we got was large house boats with their prod
uce displayed on the roofs. Our tour boat pulled up next to a pineapple boat so we all bought pineapple whilst waiting for our turn to take the long boat around the rest of the market. There were also boats pulling up next to ours trying to sell the rich tourists drinks. We finally caved and got a couple of cokes off a little boy who wanted 20,000 Vietnamese Dong ($1) but decided 15,000VD was a good price after Damien only offered 10,000VD. The long boat tour was ok, we did see a couple of transactions but it just didn’t have the hassle and bustle we expected. We think that we may have been to late in the day, it’s probably best at 6am. Still great to see, a concept we had never really heard of before coming to Asia. After the market we visited a Rice noodle factory where they make large thick rice paper which is then shredded into the rice noodles. The rice husk is bought to fuel the fires and once it is burnt it is sold at a large profit to farmers to fertilize their land. Also had some caged animals which we assumed were native to Vietnam and a pig farm full of fat happy pigs. Next was a Rice husking factory where they actually described the rice growing process which was interesting, then back on the boat, the bus and back to Can Tho for lunch.
The bus trip from Can Tho to Rach Gia was rather uneventful. It was interrupted by the occasional breaks, drop offs and changes in the blarring local television. It was either old awards nights or film clips of forlorn lovers in tricky love triangles. We finally arrived at Rach Gia about an hour and a half later than we expected. At the bus stop a couple of guys showed us a whole lot of business cards for hotels and wanted to take us there on their bikes for a huge charge. Most hotels have free transfers and we were much happier to take a taxi (which they told us ‘no taxi in Rach Gia’) as we have so much stuff. Damien cracked it and we walked out of the depot telling them we would walk the 4km to the hotel district. Low and behold there were heaps of hotels we could easily walk to and we realized we had nearly been stooged. We booked into one, then headed out for dinner. One thing we have loved about Vietnam is all the markets, they are everywhere, where Damien bought some bananas. We found a very local restaurant with the kitchen in the front where you could see all the ingredients. The staff tempted us in with an English menu and we enjoyed some very tasty noodles. The locals were entertained by Damien sitting on the little stools and struggling to get his legs under the table.
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