Advertisement
Published: November 27th 2016
Edit Blog Post
Normally I'm not one to book guided tours but the options of 1,2 or 3 day tours exploring the Mekong delta seemed to be the only feasible way of doing it. I chose the 2 day, 1 night tour that included an overnight in a local rural village homestay and that ended up costing me $30 with three meals and all transportation. There ended up being about 15 tourists on our bus. Not my cup of tea but there was definitely some value in taking a guided tour.
The ride from Ho Chi Minh to our first stop, a little seaside town that I can't recall the name for took about 2 hours. We checked out a Buddhist pagoda with three very large Buddhas of different stances. I learned a few things about what the different Buddhas, their hand gestures and their trinkets represented which was neat. After that we went to the harbour and grabbed a boat over to a local island. We went to a bee farm and had some local honey and lime tea. I had fresh tropical fruit, and we listened to some Vietnamese singers. It was all a bit staged and fake, but I sort
of expected that from one of these tours. What genuinely pissed me off though was that we got put into a horse carriage that we weren't even told about. These weren't your victoria carriage horses though, they were no bigger than a pony really and skinny to the bone. Their eyes looked bloodshot and the riders mercilessly whipped them. On top of that they had about 5-6 people in the back per horse. Me and quite a few others actually refused to get on the carriages and walked the 2km instead and definitely promised the tour company would hear from us. After the walk we got to a river where we took some traditional Vietnamese boats down a river to go the coconut candy factory. On the way it was pouring heavy tropical rain and we got soaked, on a side note though the rice paddy hats that they wear really do a great job as an umbrella and we got to wear them for the boat ride. The coconut factory was meh, and then we took a boat to another island for a late lunch after.
Lunch has a small meal included but a menu with some interesting
things on it. For example: snake, eel, ostrich, turtle, crocodile, "dinosaur egg" (most likely ostrich) and rat. After lunch we had some free time to explore the little island which had crocodile, basa fish and coconut farms on it. I chose to borrow a bike and ride through the village by myself for about an hour and a half which was pretty neat. The ecotourism lodge definitely seems to be the main part of the island
Afterwards we went back to the mainland and took a bus to Can Tho to go to our home stay. About half the group (7-8) people chose to go to the homestay while the others stayed at a hotel in Can Tho. The homestay was about 30 minutes away by rowboat, which turned out to be pretty awesome. The owner had surprisingly good English and he has a meal for us ready almost immediately. We made fresh spring rolls, of course he had cooked the noodles and the shrimp prior but we got to put em together! I was okay but Molly would have probably been better since she's better at making both dumplings and sushi than me. Some Asian I am!
We woke up the next morning at 5:30 and I found to my displeasure that I was covered in bug bites. 😞 At first I thought they were mosquito bites despite me having the mosquito net around me - but they were much bigger and itchier. So I was told by quite a few people that they were in fact bed bugs. Somehow nobody else in my room got them though. We had breakfast, then took a boat to the Mekong floating market. Was pretty cool so I took some pictures but didn't buy anything. After that we went to a rice noodle factory and got to try all the steps in the process there. Then we checked out a fruit garden/ plantation. Definitely in my happy place seeing all the mango, dragon fruit, papaya, pineapple etc. After that we headed back to Saigon via 4hr bus ride. Back at the hostel Taht had some speciality Vietnamese sticky rice that he bought for me and I had that before I went to bed for the night. Planned on taking the bus up to Mui Ne (a smaller beachside town up the coast) about 4-5 hours away.
Overall the I
was fairly indifferent about the tour but if you are wanting to see the Mekong River Delta I'm not sure you would be able to do as much on your own in the same amount of time and for that price. The area itself was beautiful and it was definitely a nice change from the hectic atmosphere of Saigon. I decided though that that was it for tours for me for the rest of my stay.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.089s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0651s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Deborah
non-member comment
Loving your Blog!
Thanks for sharing your trip. We love the info., the stories, and the pictures. D and K ?