Cruise through Mekong Delta

3rd September

Mekong Delta

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The day of the Mekong Delat trip. We woke up at 7am and moved quickly down 100 steps to the reception area. The guesthouse once again used a higher exchange rate for the dollar to their advantage, as if we pay their commission for staying in the room. Oh well, we were out and on our way to the Sinh Tourist cafe for our bus. This time we are excited to go with a reputable travel company, and we know for sure that there will be no problems along the way. Well not with the tour company anyway as we can find other things to go wrong, that I am sure about. We were both very tired, I was especially tired as my eyes did not close until 4.30 am. But we were on our way. We crossed many rice fields, and marsh lands before arriving at our boat. The boat went along the floating market where fruit, vegetables and even pepsi cola were being sold of old wooden boats. A novel idea but I can't imagine the Dubs getting into their canoes on the river Liffey. We took some pictures of the local people, and watched their faces of gloom and doom (I can imagine they hate tourists by now).

Sweet factory

Sweets being made by gissiping woman
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Angela

again with one of her fears, walking over a bridge

(well don't know if you can call that bridge?)

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We then proceeded to the coconut sweet making demonstration/shop area. The tour guide did his part and the rest was up to our wallets to do the talking. Bloody tasty candy though, and a good purchase all the same. Next same same but different rice paper making demo/shop, and the rice crispies aswell. So all in all bringing some dong is essential.
Back on the sightseeing boat for a two hour float up the river to our lunch stop. We arrived to some lovely, well presented plates of food as promised, and that was great as we were pretty hungry. Food Issue 1: Half way through my meal I noticed something alien on my rice, a closer look revealed a lovely deep fried fly (wings and all intact). Yummy. That was the beginning of my food mis-haps for the day. After lunch we were treated to some Vietnamese traditional music sung/screamed by the local farmers before they had to return to the fields. A nice treat luckily didn't last too long. Ha ha ha.

Traditional Music

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David on the horse

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Angela by the fountain in Chau Doc
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Back on the boat and a few hours later arrived in our night stop in Chau Doc. At this stage we were on the last day in Vietnam so our craving to sample some snake meat was at its strongest. So we went in the search for it, found a snake hot pot but they were all out of snake that day. Oopsie, we tried. So instead David had an eel, and I had my favourite chicken leg with rice. Food Issue 2: Half way through, enjoy my deep fried chicken leg I stuck my fork into the middle of it to find a very raw center, ah big no no in my book. So thats how it ends for today. No snake and raw chicken.

Angela & David