Day 4 Can Tho and the Mekong River

When we arrived yesterday afternoon, we were poached by a tour guide operator as soon as we got out of the taxi.  He sat me down and worked out the Mekong tour we went on today.  We were collected in the foyer of the motel at 5:30 this morning by Linh Tran, a 22 year old English speaking local woman who took us to our boat and it's driver just down the road.  Linh is studying tourism at the local university, and works as a tour guide up to 4-6 days a week to pay for her education. Ask for her if at the Quoc Te Hotel if you would like an excellent tour guide or email dung_mekongdelta@yahoo.com.au to book a tour with her.  Our driver for the day was...no, hang on.  Hung was our driver.

Our tour today included 2 separate floating markets followed by a rice noodle factory.  The rice noodle factory was a hotbox and one point of interest was the piggery that was 5 meters from the drying rice paper rolls, and the chooks running throughout the whole setup.  The workers were kind enough to let me ruin 2 circles of rice paper in their efforts to support the tourist industry.  Actually you could tell they were mildly pissed off that our guide had asked if I could participate.  We continued on, taking a tour on foot on the banks of the Mekong passing the locals houses and crops and later, lunch on the banks of the river at a home stay.  Our lunch (fish) was caught for us once we put our order in.  It was delicious. We arrived back here about 1:30pm.  

This afternoon I successfully posted back 2 books to Australia.  Unfortunately I was not able to post the DVD's back as the word "sex" seemed to be a problem on my Sex and the City DVD's.  The post office lady opened the books and looked through them, then she pointed to the word SEX on my DVD and said "Is that sex?"  and I said "yes".  She passed it back under the grill and said "no, no post."  I couldn't see the word sex on Grey's Anatomy or The Golden Girls, but they got passed back too.  I wasn't alone.  The lady next to me was having her underpants held up and scrutinised.  She was obviously sending about 10 pairs of undies to someone special.  Maybe they passed the decency test, but my DVD's definitely failed.  It was an archaic system.  They packed the books up in a cardboard box, then I had to fill out 3 separate forms with my details on them, and they sticky-taped away and finally popped it in a corner.  Everything is added up by hand on a calculator, and all information is recorded in long hand on paper.  No computers at all - anywhere!  I won't be expecting those books anytime soon.  

Found some local backstreets that function as some sort of market lane way.  Bought some huge deep fried battered fish fillets for 25 cents each.  They were battered in something that tasted strongly of honey.  Interesting.  We ate that and fresh bread rolls for dinner. 

I also found some panadol finally!  The pharmacy man was kind enough to give me a discount based on how many panadol were left in the box I bought.  The supermarket was my next discovery.  It was absolutely packed at about 5:30pm!   Seems the whole town congregates there on Friday afternoon.  They sell some...umm...amazing things there.  Meat is self serve, much like fruit and vegetables.  Hearts, tongue and kidney galore.  All the usual stuff as well.  You just pick up a server and plop the meat you want into a plastic bag, and Bob's your uncle!  I really wanted to photograph that but thought that would seem very rude to the locals.  There were also frog eggs (I think) in plastic bags full of water secured with rubber bands, frog legs and tiny little kidneys just to mention just a few of the stranger food items available.  Once again, we were a walking tourist attraction in our own right.  Linh, the tour guide assures us that lots of people have 5 or more children here, what these locals are staring at is the large number of boys I have.  They think I'm very lucky.  Good grief!  Could someone tell me when the luck is going to kick in.

Photos of day 4:

Our carriage for the day

Winner of best photo of the day competition. Courtesy Drew Paterson.

The poles are used to let customers know what each boat sells.  

Linh Tran our tour guide for the day

We navigated a smaller creek to get to the rice noodle factory

This is the rice noodle factory. Drying process is taking place.  Piggery in background.

Hung, the driver made these for us while we were in the rice noodle factory. Apparently quite a skill to carve so neatly.  Would go down well at a school fete I think.

The men apparently drive the boats and the women do the bartering - Linh says they are better at it.

Hung - our driver for the day.  Owner of the boat and father of 3.

Our guide asked this lady what she was cooking - "rat" was the reply. It did smell good though.

This is called a monkey bridge. Popular before the rise of the moped, but not needed so much these days.  Jesus, what's that man in the background doing to Max?  Max keeps telling me people keep grabbing him, and I barely listen to him.

With my advanced gymnastic abilities the monkey bridge was no problem for me.

Lunch at the home stay.  We were relieved to discover home stay houses are huge and interesting.

Raining on the Mekong.

Heading home

So, off to Vinh Long tomorrow by boat, bike riding and home stay then back to Ho Chi Minh City for the night.  A slight change of plans after receiving advice front Linh the tour guide.  We are heading to Mui Ne after that for a relax by the beach.