South to the Mekong

Bypassed the tours and caught a bus today to Can Tho 3hrs south of HCMC in the middle of the Mekong Delta. We wern’t really sure of where we were headingbut Can Tho turned out to be a pleasent little riverside city of just over a million people. Ended up having dinner  with a women who was a Vietnamese war orphan who was found in an orphanage  in Can Tho by an Ausralian lady and then adopted by a Finish couple and then emigrared to England and had taken a sabatical to help at her old orphanage. The orphanage now full of severely handicapped kids.

Six O’clock the next morning we took a tour around a floating market by boat, a couple of k’s up the Can Tho River ( a branch of the Mekong). The market was selling all sorts of produce from throughout the Delta.

After the market, we headed to a rice noodle factory where Karen had a go at making the thick. Rice paper which is dried and later sliced into vermicelli.

Our next step was to take the bus from Can Tho to Chau Doc (and James it has nothing to do with Word or documents!!) We did this to get closer to the border and it was the last night we were spending in Viet Nam. We had a small mission to find a hotel – that had a room available at the right price, but eventually we got there after lugging our packs around town in the heat. (The organiser tells us this is great training for Nepal!) We went for a walk along the river front and stopped to watch a group of children and adults playing a game like ‘hacky sack’ but with a plastic dart type thingy! It was interesting as the parks are all used for recreation and exercise in the early morning and late afternoons/evenings. People run, jog, and play badminton etc.Great places to people watch and enjoy cold water!! A man came up to us and we chatted for ages. He was a teacher of English at a local school and was an ex tour company employee. He was very well read and knew quite a lot about New Zealand – mainly from television and the internet. He was really interesting and we got onto business and econmics etc of Viet Nam. He recalled many tales of how things have changed in Viet Nam in the last 20 years. Like a lot of countries the gaps are widening. We then found a restaurant to eat at – later than we had hoped!! It was up early the next morning to get our cyclos to the jetty to head towards Cambodia on the boat.