A very boring tour of the Mekong Delta

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Day 394: Tuesday 28th July - On and off various modes of transport all day

For the next two days I am on a tour to the Mekong Delta. I’ve changed my mind about whether to go to the Mekong Delta several times over the course of the last few days in Saigon, but in the end I chose to pay $23 for a two day tour. The case for was not wanting to miss out on seeing an example of Vietnamese agricultural life and after tracking the Mekong’s progress through Thailand, Laos and Cambodia I felt drawn to seeing it in the final country it flows through before discharging into the South China Sea. The case against was that I had been told by Maria - the Spanish girl I met on the slowboat down the Mekong in Laos - that it was very missable (although she only did a one day trip), I also wasn’t getting too excited by the itinerary of the tour and I’m keen to move on from Southeast Asia and get to China . As it proved my original instinct to give the region a miss would have been the right one as the two day tour ends up being one of the most disappointing tours I’ve done on my trip.

The tour departs from Saigon at 7:30am and we spend the next three hours on a cramped bus as we make our way to My Tho, the first major town on the Mekong Delta from Saigon. I spend most of the journey sleeping, indeed I spend a large proportion of the tour sleeping. I may be tired after a few busy days on the trot and too many early mornings in a row to count but most of the time once I’m seeing something new I am revitalised by the experience I am having. This is not the case with the Mekong Delta tour - it is so dull it sends me to sleep! At My Tho we get on to a boat and visit a small floating market which is nothing special. We return to dry land and visit a local outlet which makes coconut candies, rice paper and pop rice. Seeing how they make pop rice is kind of cool but overall the visit is underwhelming, although I do make sure I get more than my fair share of the freebie sweets on offer!

We get back on to the boat and make our way to our lunch stop. Our boat is mainly full of French school kids and some over-excitable Vietnamese and the two groups together aren’t a good combination. Thankfully I’m sharing the trip with Matt and Carly after bumping into them again in Saigon. We also meet a Dutch girl - Ingrid - and hanging out with the other three makes the trip worthwhile from one perspective as the content of the tour certainly doesn’t.

After lunch we get treated (I can’t help the sarcasm) to a rowing boat trip down one of the many canals which form a network throughout the Mekong Delta. We then get off the rowing boat and on to another boat which drops us off at Vinh Long where we have to wait for two hours in a smelly dirty large town until the next stage of the tour. Myself, Carly and Matt are now getting very sick of the constant getting off one form of transport, on to another and lugging our heavy bags around without ever fully knowing what was going to happen next. As it is, the next happens to get worse. At around 5pm we get on a bus which is taking us to Can Tho, where we are spending the night. After around an hour on the bus it is stuck in traffic, several kilometres from the ferry crossing so our guide announces that we should get off the bus and walk to the ferry terminal as it will be quicker - great!

The walk to the ferry crossing is beside the road where lorries are belching out toxic fumes and we constantly seem to have to dodge motorbikes. If I’d known I’d have to carry my 20 kilo pack for this length of time I would have left it in Saigon. Carly is sick several times on the way and tells us that she was sick out of the window of the bus in the seat in front of me whilst I was asleep. The vomit hit a motorcyclist in the face who was riding just behind the bus! This story creases me up but is the only positive note on the gruelling walk to the ferry terminal. We get on the ferry tired for the crossing across the river and once on the other side we have more walking to do through smelly streets before we get a taxi to our hotel in Can Tho, the Delta’s biggest city.

Despite sleeping a large proportion of the day I’m still tired after an exhausting day where I’ve spent more time travelling than actually seeing any of the Mekong Delta. Carly is too ill to eat, so me and Matt go out for a well deserved couple of beers with Ingrid. I hope tomorrow is a big improvement on today.

Day 395: Wednesday 29th July - Cai Rang Floating market

It is another early start to get up to see the Mekong Delta’s biggest floating market - the Cai Rang floating market. It is a mass of boats, selling various fruits and vegetables to wholesalers who bring their boats up alongside the sellers. The traders advertise what they are selling by tying the produce to a bamboo pole which they display above their boats. It is interesting to spend time watching the activity on the river, which is undoubtedly the highlight of the tour (although that isn’t hard!) but there isn’t the mass array of colour I had expected as the traders invariably keep their produce below deck until they are in the process of making a sale.

Whilst at the market, I try some durian, the most expensive fruit in this part of the world. I’ve smelt this fruit on plenty of occasions throughout the last five months in Southeast Asia but until this morning I have yet to taste it. The smell is off-putting. The fruits smells like rotten cheese and many hotels and guesthouses ban you from taking the fruit into the hotel. But, you’ve got to try everything once - it may be the best tasting fruit in the world. The taste is as bad as the smell - like chewing on a moist, mouldy cheese and after two mouthfuls I’ve had all I can take, it’s rancid.

After visiting the floating market we spend the remainder of the morning visiting a rice noodles making shop and then a rice-husking mill. They help pass the time until we get on the bus to travel the four hours back to Saigon in another cramped bus, but neither are particularly that interesting, which just about sums the tour up. In an area which provides much of Vietnam’s food - fruit, vegetables, and rice - we have seen little of rice fields or fruit orchards. Rather, we have seen much of the busyness of the 21 million people that squash into this small area in Southern Vietnam. I’ve read that this area is Vietnam on half-speed but the tour doesn’t convey this impression as you are transferred from one mode of transport to another and you can forget relaxation. I wish I’d gone with my original instinct and given it a miss, but nevermind at least you can move on to the next experience quickly when you are backpacking.

Back in Saigon, I sit with Matt and Carly in a cafe for an hour before they have to leave for Nha Trang. After they leave I take a taxi to the train station. I try a few taxis with Saigon’s most reputable company but the drivers don’t understand where I want to go. Another taxi driver calls me over as he speaks English. I don’t know why but I have a bad feeling about this as soon as I climb in. The guy chats away to me and is pleasant but as I lean forward to speak to him I notice the meter clocking on at some rate. The meter is rigged, I decide, which is a known scam in Saigon and in other major cities in Southeast Asia. He’s picked on the wrong person as I know that the ride should be no more than 40,000 Dong (just over a pound) from my experience of getting taxis the last few days. When he pulls up the meter shows 92,000 Dong. I refuse to pay that much and tell the driver that his meter is rigged. He won’t look me in the eye so I know I’ve uncovered his scam and he asks for 50,000 Dong. I give him 40,000 Dong and mouth to the backpackers trying to get in that the meter is rigged as I walk off with a skip in my step after getting one over a scam merchant.

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Comments

[David]

Hi, I've been in Vietnam for 3 days and decided to go back in Thailand. Vietnam is far from exciting as I suspected, having visited most of SEA. This said, I'm leaving because it't too expensive and it's simply lacks the 'Wow' feeling I got in Cambodia or Thailand. As for scamming, I went around central Saigon at the back of a motorbike for about 2 hours, I decided to give him 10$ since he'd been so nice, then he wanted 120$ !!!!!! I moralised him a bit and gave him the original offering. D.