After a full day in Saigon meeting more relatives (including a Buddhist uncle) and spending a few hours at a safari-themed park with my cousins (check out Callie's blog), we woke up early the next morning to catch a tour bus to start our two-day journey exploring the Mekong Delta. Two hours on the air-conditioned bus brought us to a small fishing village called My Tho where we boarded a motorboat and set off.

From the boat we watched the daily life of the people who live along the Mekong and the floating markets where they go to buy, sell and exchange goods. Just like Saigon, the motorboat is the Mekong Delta's "moto", with the water being their roadways. The numerous rivers and tributaries of the Mekong are much easier to navigate than the thick, surrounding jungles so people have settled along its banks.

Our first stop was in Ben Tre where we watched them make rice paper, coconut candies, banana paper (?) and stuff that looked like rice crispy cereal (like puffed wheat.. except.. puffed rice). It was a small island with a market and filled with boatloads of tourists. After another hour down the river we stopped and had lunch at a riverside restaurant (with alligators) which included a traditional Vietnamese music performance. From there it was onto Vinh Long where wedisembarked at the docks and were allowed to wander its famous street markets for the afternoon. From there we boarded a bus for a two hour drive and a ferry ride to Can Tho (the biggest city in the Mekong Delta and where my mum is from) where we stayed the night. All of the people in our tour group got dropped off at a hotel, but somehow we had been upgraded to a classy, river-side, 3-star hotel for free! We caught a cab to the hotel (that our tour guide paid for) and spent the night exploring Can Tho.

The next morning we got up early to see the Cai Be floating market. Each boat would have a long pole with the fruit or veggie hanging off it to tell others what they were selling. Families would come out on their boats and spend the morning buying groceries with their dogs and children playing on the decks. After an hour we moved to a quieter part of the Mekong to cruise down narrow rivers and streams. The local kids, hearing our boat engine, would come to the banks and wave at us as we passed. A few, less sympathetic children pretended to shoot at us. For a light lunch we stopped for at a fruit garden and ended up chatting with a Swiss and German couple for a while. After a visit to a rice husking mill, we heading back to Can Tho to have a (real) lunch of fried crisp field mouse! It was like small, delicious chicken.

Once the tour ended after lunch, the entire group boarded the bus to return to Saigon. We had changed our itinerary to go to Phu Quoc so we split off from the group and went our own way. A Swiss couple we met (who were also going to Phu Quoc) took a cab with us to the bus station where we caught a three hour bus ride (for $3.50) to the coastal town of Rach Gia. The "bus" was actually a mini-van crammed with 14 people and luggage. I attempted, unsuccessfully, to take a nap while our driver (who liked to speed) was swerving around cars and motos over the rough and uneven road. Once we made it to Rach Gia, the driver didn't drop us off at our hotel and went to the bus station instead. The four of us were staying at the same hotel so, while being bombarded by mototaxis, we managed to navigate the 15 minute walk through Rach Gia to the hotel. Not surprisingly, being loaded down with all our packs, we got quite a few stares walking down the street. The hotel we checked into wasn't the greatest I've ever stayed in, even though it did have sexy tiles in the bathroom, phantom cockroaches and MTV on every channel. We ventured out to eat Hot Pot for dinner before succumbing to exhaustion and falling asleep at 10 o'clock, ending our two-day adventure down the Mekong.

Here's Callie's post with a link to her pictures.