Can Tho to Ho Chi Minh

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Can Tho Victoria Hotel

We both sleep a little bit better last night..had some fairly serious rain around 6pm that cooled things down nicely for a bit.
A nice pub dinner of Vietnamese dishes last night then a couple of beers on our deck watching the rain and all the river traffic scurrying
to return to port and in bed by about 9. I did play around a bit with M's photo's as each of her photo's was sized at about 3 mb but
then we remembered Lori telling me about Picassa and I tried it and it seems to have reduced them nicely so maybe we'll finally be able to post more than 1 😊

Up @ 6am again and have a nice breakfast then have to pack and check out etc. We meet our driver in the lobby at 8am and load our stuff into a private 8 person minivan and head off for Ho Chi Minh city. It's another 4.5 hour journey to cover only 190 km.. simply because of the density of the traffic.
It's incredible how much highway traffic there is.

We wind up in a lovely old French Colonial hotel in the heart of old Saigon.. It was built in 1930 and has been extremely well maintained and upgraded.
This is a very busy vibrant growing city and while the downtown hasn't changed that much since we were here in 2006 the outskirts are booming..acres and acres of single family hi end detached homes being built..huge new commercial developments going up simultaneously.

Had a walk around town..a couple of beers and what M call's the greatest Margarita pizza she has ever tasted. We suspect its because of the fact that unlike in Canada they can still produce real Mozzarella cheese here..ie from unpasteurized water buffalo milk the same as the Italians did for so many years before the EU started to legislate against it.

She is down in the pool now and I am going to see if we can upload the pics that I couldnt before. We havent bothered to take any in Saigon simply because we took so many last time so these will all be from the last 2 days in Can Tho.

It will be another early evening as we have yet again another 6am wakeup call in order to be ready to be picked up at 8am and driven to Phan Thiet which is another 190 km drive NE of Saigon. We will be there for 4 nights so I'm sure we will both get some more photo's there.

Cheers for now

R&M

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Photos

Can Tho
Victoria Hotel view from the Deck

Can Tho
Victoria Hotel view from the front

Can Tho
Hotel from the water as we leave to go bicycling

Can Tho
Our chariots being transported for the 16km cycle ride

Can Tho
Cruising up a canal

Can Tho
another canal scene

Can Tho
a "monkey bridge" and our guide demonstrating how he used them when he was a kid

Can Tho
Me trying to recall how to do this

Can Tho
Small family cemetary in the countryside

Can Tho
Pineapple

Can Tho
while cycling along the canals

Can Tho
a clean "rice fed" rat for someones lucky dinner

Can Tho
The "rent a duck" flock..

Can Tho
Kmer children whose parents work the rice fields

Can Tho
Primary school across the canal

Can Tho
Cruising back to the hotel

Can Tho
Cruising home

Can Tho
another scene along the canal