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Published: January 22nd 2009
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Firstly let me say i became a victim of my own picture taking mania, i got so many that it became too much of a hassle to sort out in the limited time i had in the internet cafe. Thats why it took me 3 months to write anymore on here. Apologies.
Our last stop in Vietnam was Saigon and the Mekong Delta, a load of the people we met said Saigon was going to be busier than Hanoi the sister capital in the north, but we didn't find it to be the case. We started our stay in the Pham Ngu Lao area which is the backpacker area. Streets of cheap cafes, bars, tour operators and guesthouses line every alley and road. The familiar assault of cab drivers and guesthouse owners crowd the coach doorway as people disembark, they barely even register as we already know where we are staying. All that remains for us to do is investigate a tour of the Mekong Delta the lifeblood of Vietnam.
The tour we choose started early the next morning and started with a few hours in a minivan with a bunch of other people, we ended up waiting for
a while outside a number of other hotels as we waited for people to continue checking out, most annoying. A long drive later stopping at the obligitory shops/rest rooms on the way we made it to the delta. What we didnt realise is that most of the delta that you can get too easily is along the roads, i guess the Vietnamese in the area realised that travelling in a car along a road is a shit load quicker and easier than travelling by boat. The first floating market we went too and supposedly the biggest in the world was at Cai Rang this is mainly a wholesail market selling produce in bulk and operates fairly early in the morning. Each wholesale boat has a bamboo rod with different veg tied to it which shows what they are selling, suffice to say the delays when we started meant we saw only a few boats and not much activity.
After that we get in a smaller boat to visit a rice factory and a coconut sweet factory which operate in smaller rivers off the main one. Eating fresh warm and sticky coconut sweets with peanuts while watching them make rice
paper was pretty cool. Lunch involves a local restaurant where we eat Elephant Ear fish spring rolls and soup, we go halves with a couple of kiwis which we keep bumping into. We got pretty lucky on the way back because the small boat we were in didn't have a cover and we made it back to the main boat before the heavens opened again, not so lucky were the Americans who were running later than us, i imagine they got soaked to the bone.
We overnight in a hotel in Can Tho and go to another floating market at Cai Be in the morning, again it seems we were too late to see much action, but i have reason to believe that may have been due to the excellent street market which was just a short boat drive away. The difference with this market as opposed to everything else we had seen so far in Vietnam was that it is for locals and we were the only westerners in it. Fresh veg, meat and fish were everywhere along with people selling snack food and cakes including some very tasty banana fritters but we did see some stuff that
Mekong Elephant Ear Fish
Best eaten with Thai basil, rice paper and fish sauce didn't really register until i looked at the pictures later on. Dubious edibles is a understatement. It was great to finally see something real even if it was a little disgusting.
We returned to Saigon again and stay closer to the center of town and to say a final farewell proceed to have a fine french meal including the best ever chocolate souffle.
So the final words on Vietnam, it is a lot more friendly than some people had commented on, we didnt really feel there was a hge difference between North and South in terms of the people. This may be due to the fact that most people we encountered were involved in the tourist industry in some way but nearly everyone has a ready smile and we certainly didnt feel at all threated or that we were only there to get ripped off. Vietnamese spring rolls definately win the south east Asia prize as the tasiest.
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Troi
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Back to our Roots.
Heavy....perfect example of Vietnam!