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Published: June 28th 2006
Wednesday 21st June Laura - A very early start, which was not fun after getting up to watch the England game at 2 in the morning! We were surprised to find that the bus was actually there on time. The driver wouldn't let us go and grab breakfast, even though we ended up sitting on the bus for an inexplicable 40 minutes before he decided to leave. Paul slept and I read my lame book.
A couple of hours later we arrived at Cai Be, and transferred onto a boat to go and see a floating market. For the local people, the river is their life. They live on it, bathe in it, use the water for cooking, clean their clothes in it... It was really interesting to see. It's such a different way of life to what we're used to. And it's also very different to the other places we've visited in Vietnam. The houses they live in are basically huts, made of bamboo or corregated iron, that sit on stilts on the river bank. Other people live in the boats that they sell things from.
The floating market was quite small, but we're going to a
bigger one tomorrow so I'll go into more detail about that one. After the market we stopped off at a riverside factory, where they made coconut candy and rice paper. The candy was quite tasty (even though i don't actually like coconuts), a bit like fudge - very sticky! It was quite interesting to see the process, but I'm not sure how authentic the factories are. I think they may have been set up for tourists. They certainly were selling a lot of produce in convenient souvenier-sized packages!
After that we went to a puffed rice 'factory', where they cook rices in sand until it puffs out. They set it in coconut syrup and it tasted a bit like rice crispies bars. We also got loads of free honey tea, which tasted like cough syrup - yummy!
Not quite full from our free tasters, we then stopped for free lunch at a very pretty little riverside restaurant. The food was surprisingly good (considering it was free), and very filling. When we'd eaten there was traditional Vietnemese music played by a local band. This entertainment was also 'free', but they strongly encouraged us to give donations....
We got
Alligator eyes!
Eyes on the boat to ward off alligatorsback in the boat and saw more of the delta region. It was very pretty and very tropical - just like the movies. The tributaries were narrow and muddy, with tropical plants growing on the river banks. I was looking out for crocodiles but didn't see any!
We were dropped off at a market town called Vinh Long, where we were given our backpacks and told to wait an hour for a bus to pick us up. We sat in a cafe and annoyed the staff by not buying anything and read and read and read (it was too hot to even consider walking around the market for more than 20 minutes). Two and half hours later the bus finally arrived.
We then got a short ferry ride to Can Tho city, watching a lightning storm on the way (which was in the direction we were heading!). We arrived at our hotel, which was nice enough, and because it had started raining heavily we were forced to eat in a department store opposite the hotel! Not very adventurous of us I admit. Much to amusment of some local children, Paul and I played a game of Air Hockey.
Thursday 22nd June Paul - Another early start this morning and I'm starting to wonder if this will inspire Laura and I to get up early every morning. I doubt it!
Another scorching day so we whacked on copius amounts of sun cream and mosquito repellant. Climbed on board a small, wooden motorised boat and headed towards the floating market. Cai Rang floating market to be exact. After a short trip down the Delta we could see a huge mass of wooden boats ahead of us. As we pulled closer people were throwing food, t-shirts, drinks, you name it, it was probably on sale from the boats. Our boat slowed right down to cross through the market as it was so crammed! It was fascinating to watch all the locals buying and selling their produce, while giving the obligatory friendly wave to the weird Westerners who had come to see their jobs.
A brief stop to sample some local fruits was followed by a two hour boat trip through the tiny tributaries that the Delta has fanned into. This was probably my favourite part of the whole 3 days. We travelled for miles into the countryside
and saw how the Delta played such a pivitol role in everyones lives here. They even have floating toilets to poo into! Sexy! Tiny waterways connected all the places and this was the only time in the day that the trip was possible because it was high tide. With only a few metres from bank to bank, it's not hard to see why.
Had lunch in a random cafe along the dusty road before a 2 hour wait for our next bus which would take us to Chau Doc. Laura and I managed to get into the thick of the action on the bus, the two front seats. Until you've experienced Vietnames driving, you've not seen anything yet. If you think your mum is bad you ain't seen nothing yet. Luckily Laura managed to sleep through most of it but I got a good view on some cracking near misses. The bus driver seemed totally nonplussed by it all.
After we'd arrived we had a quick dinner in another random cafe and went to sleep. All these early mornings were taking it out of us! I nearly feel sorry for all you people at work.
Friday 23rd June
Paul - The final early morning for a while I feel. 6 am! Today we would be heading to Cambodia, but first there was another boat trip to do.
Headed down to the docks and climbed aboard a rowing boat to be led by our guide "Baa". Cool name. She would be rowing us round the floating houses of Chau Doc. To make their living they breed fish in huge cages and export them around the world. Apparently Australia and Japan are two big importers from around here. All the houses are floating on tyres that have been taken off vehicles that are too worn for the road as well as barrels.
The houses were a fascinating insight into life around here. To visit anywhere from your house you have to take a boat which, although we found bizarre, was fun to watch. As it was quite early all the locals were out and about on their wooden boats and it made for a hectic and fun experience.
I then played shuttlecock football with some of the locals in a tiny village for fifteen minutes while Laura took photos. I'd like to
tell you that I won but this guy was good! Clearly he spends too much time playing shuttlecock football and not enough time working.
Transferred to a wooden motor boat and settled down for the 3 hour boat ride to the border. I think both me and Laura are so glad we did the trip to Cambodia this way as it has really opened our eyes to much more about Vietnam. Although the area is quite poor everyone is so friendly and it has given me a great insight into another way of life that used to be so alien to me.
The boat trip was fantastic. We delved even deeper into some ethnic minority villages on the way to the border and saw a whole host of amazing things. Water buffalo cooling off in the river, kids clambering on to water buffalos in the river, rows upon rows of houses on huge stills to protect them from the rising waters, people working in the rice fields, woman washing their hair in the river... the list goes on. It was fantastic. I sat, wide eyed, for the whole three hours.
Arrived at the border and got off
for a lunch break. Crossing over to Cambodia was very easy considering how hostile the tensions are between both countries. Just a quick look at my passport and we were on our way. Had to walk about 400 metres though to get on a new boat as obviously boats couldn't cross the border.
We had the dubious pleasure of sharing the boat ride into Cambodia with a bunch of obnoxious Ozzies who were on their summer vacation from Uni. Imagine a bunch of freshers on holiday and you'll get the idea! First thing I noticed about Cambodia is how everyone seemed to be working at the riverside, farming the fields. Except for the children who were running about playing games of football, using the palm trees as impromtu goal posts.
Some final thoughts on Vietnam We really enjoyed Vietnam. It was not at all what I was expecting. Apart from the museums and places like the Cu Chi tunnels, you wouldn't really know that there had been such a horrific war there not so long ago.
The beaches were FANTASTIC, the food was even nicer than in China, the people are very friendly and very
beautiful. They seem to live such a simple life, although they work bloody hard (especially the women). Everyone seems to be making money any way they can and most houses in the tourist towns have either been opened up as shops or cafes, or the residents will be standing outside with a glass cabinet containing a variety of items to sell. This usually includes water, coca cola, miranda (another fizzy drink), plain baguettes, 'laughing cow' cheese, packs of tissues, nivea suncream, and Omo washing powder.
Omo washing powder deserves a few sentences of it's own really. It is the only brand of washing powder that we could get hold of and it is absolutue rubbish. I'm pretty sick of the sight of it after weeks of doing handwashing every evening. More amusingly, Ronaldinho is the face of Omo washing powder and we saw huge billboards of him advertising it across Ho Chi Minh City. Now we're not quite sure if he has actually done this embarrassing advert thousands of miles away from home, or whether the lack of copyright laws in Vietnam has allowed Omo to use a picture of him as the face of their brand. He certainly
was wearing a lot of Nike in the photo... Talking of copyright laws, that brings me to another great thing about Vietnam - the fact that you can buy photocopies of the lonely planet for little more than a pound! Brilliant.
Another thing we noticed about Vietnam, is that everyone seems to own a motorbike. A lot of the time people seem to just hang around on the streets with their motorbikes trying to make money by giving people lifts. When they're not acting as a taxi, then they will be driving round with their whole family clinging on the back. It is not unusual to see three adults cramped on with a baby hanging off someone's lap and another baby sitting in between the driver's legs. Often there'll also be a TV perched on there for good measure, and perhaps even a couple of baskets filled with fruit hanging from a bamboo pole that is resting on the drivers shoulders. Nothing ever seems strange anymore! I saw someone attaching a double mattress to a cyclo the other day, and we were highly amused by a guy with a million balloons attached to his bike, so that he had
to peer through the gaps between the balloons to see where he was going.
Vietnam is even more football crazy than England, so it turns out that it was a good country to see the world cup in. Every bar, cafe and restaurant was showing the football, much to paul's delight. Many locals also gave their support to england, which was nice. Although i did see more Brazil and Argentina shirts floating around...
So all in all, we'd give vietnam ten out of ten. That's another country through on our trip (rather sadly), and another one that we would love to come back to and see more of as we didn't really have time to go further north than Hoi An. Oh yes we certainly are planning our next world trip already!!!
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Neal
non-member comment
Thailand
alrite you 2, Earlier comment about that Madrid shirt i agree you scruffy minga Paul if u only have 1 thats just rank. I bet ur lovin the chance to just be mingin. anyway more importantly could u let me know when abouts your in thailand, i drive bk from Paris nxt friday and fly to thailand on the sunday 9th i know this 4 definite cos genius that i am decided to fly while the world cup final is on, gutted, neway there till 16th August, goin to be goin climbin around Krabi at some point so maybe try and meet up with u than, keep enjoyin yourselves mingaz