Blogs from Can Tho, Mekong River Delta, Vietnam, Asia - page 15

on the bus from 'can tho' to 'cao lanh', i was offered a sample of a sweet. it resembled raw meat but i wasn't able to figure it out, nor sadly buy any before i was kicked off the bus. my stop came up far too quickly for me to figure it out or buy any. i was pulling out the money when they got fired up and said this is my stop (it was more of a shouted YOU!!-many people have rudimentary english skills-i am used to being called, usually loudly, YOU!!!!!!). so out i went just like that. all was not a bust though. at the "highway" intersection where i was dropped off, there was a vendor with some delicious food stuffs. i had fresh fried eggplant, tomato, green beans and mirleton(sp). umm umm ... read more

There isn't a huge amount to see and do in Châu Đốc. The morning after our arrival, we catch a minibus to Cần Thơ pronounced c'n-ter), some three hours or so away from Châu Đốc. Which brings me to another thing...when it comes to trying out new languages I'm usually quite adventurous, but with Vietnamese I think I might as well give up already. As soon as we arrived from the border, the switch from Indian-derived scripts (as in Thai, Lao and Khmer) to Latin alphabet was particularly striking...Even though we couldn't even begin to guess what anything meant, somehow it was comforting to see As, Bs and Cs again, albeit decorated with a thoroughly confusing array of accents and diacritics - squiggles everywhere ! However, when it comes to spoken Vietnamese...the sounds of this language ... read more