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Published: March 9th 2012
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Pumpkin boat
The pole shows what is for sale (although we could only see pumpkins!). Note also the florid pant suits the ladies of the delta wear. K - Whilst in Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon) we visited the War Remnants Museum covering the American War. It consists mainly of photographs including many by journalists killed during the war. There is also a very moving section highlighting the ongoing effects of Agent Orange and other chemicals used during the conflict - a second generation of children still being born with severe disabilities. It is thought provoking and highly recommended if you are ever in Saigon.
Although HCMC is a nice enough City we decided to spend our last couple of nights in Vietnam in the Mekong Delta. The Delta is a popular tourist trip from HCMC but in order to make life harder we elected to travel on our own. After all nothing beats spending a day a little confused and nervous as to whether you are on the right bus heading to the right destination and whether you will be able to find anywhere to sleep at the end of it.
Fortunately it turned out to be one of our more successful side trips. On arriving at Can Tho, the largest City on the Delta, we found a nice hotel very easily and then met
a young lady who acts as an English speaking liaison for small boat owners. Our main rationale for traveling solo was that we wanted to avoid sitting on a large boat with a group of fellow of Westerners so we did a deal with her quickly, and at 5.30 the next morning we were being driven up the river in our own little boat.
Our destination was the Cai Rang floating market, which was very different to the one we visited near Bangkok in January. This was much more commercial with larger boats and no tourist vendors. Sellers advertise their wares by tying items of produce to their boat masts and we were not in need of any cabbages or pineapples so we restricted ourselves to a couple of coffees.
We then continued on to Phong Dien, a smaller floating market where it seemed the buyers from the bigger market were now the sellers. Either way there was very little except fruit for us to buy and pretty hungry by now we headed off to a local village for lunch and by 2pm we were back on our bus to HCMC. A whistle-stop visit to the Delta (which
Kate in her new crown
M- don't encourage her! covers 39,000KM!) but worthwhile all the same.
I visited Vietnam in 2000 and it has changed a lot since then. The main change has been the number of tourists - there are fully fledged backpacker and tourist areas and travel here is a lot easier than it used to be. In many ways this is great as you can see more in a shorter time, however it also means that sometimes you feel you are on a bit of a tourist treadmill. The highlights of this trip were definitely when we stepped off the treadmill for a little while - seeing things like the Dong Hoi caves or being in our own little boat on the Mekong river.
Back in HCMC we celebrated the end of a great 3 weeks with a couple of beers in the local Beer Hoi (street side bar with plastic stools of course and beer at 30 cents a glass). Net stop Manilla!
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Rosy
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