In search of my long lost home in the Mekong.

Wanting to spend a couple of days in Can Tho, the town where I was born, I caught a morning shuttle back to Saigon to join a tour group.

Can Tho is the largest city in the Mekong Delta, with an estimated population of over a million people.  I find these statistics are very misleading.  By my observations, Can Tho appears to have the same amount people as Vung Tau, which has a 2005 consensus of 250,000 people.  Every guide book I have read report it as a small town with a mediocre beach when it is obvious that Vung Tau has a much greater population, perhaps in the millions.  If the same flausified information applies to Can Tho's population, that would put its true population be a few million at  least.

The problem with statistics in Vietnam is that if the government is in charge of the consensus, it can't be accurate because the government does little in this country.  In fact, it would appear there is a lot of freedom in Vietnam.  This actually disguised in the form of inadequate support from the government.

There isn't much in the way of social assistance or programmes like there is back home.  Then again there isn't taxation here either, at least not unless you make a cool four million dong (under $290 Cdn) a year.

I wouldn't want to get sick or get in an accident here.  I would probably be left to rot in the streets and have to amputate a limb or two!  It makes me wonder how reliable is my insurance if I should ever need to be medically evacuated for treatment elsewhere.  The fellow I met earlier from New Zealand had to get flown to Bangkok to get treatment for his infected arm.  That would sure make for a memorable travel experience!

The trip back to Saigon would take about 2.5 hours.  Along the way, the co-driver who sat in the back would stick his head out the window and yell frantically to people standing on the roadside who could be potential fares.  He would even sometimes curse at the other shuttle drivers as they fought over stealing each other's fare.  It was quite comical to witness.

Being the first time in a shuttle in Vietnam, I realize how crazy these drivers really are.  It's one thing to see traffic in the city, but being a passenger in a shuttle on the highway is a completely different animal.  Apparently, there are no rules for the road.  The road is shared by every type of traffic imaginable, foot, bicycle, motorbike, car, truck, van, even dogs and sometimes chickens. While people generally travel on the right hand side, motorbikes even travel in the opposite direction. Need to do a U-turn?  No problem, just wait for a gap and cut everybody off while you complete the turn.   If you don't cut people off, you won't get anywhere.   People honk and toot their horns religiously and at long bouts at a time.  However, the horn here is used to caution that the driver behind wants to pass, or when a driver is heading into a blind intersection and want to warn others.

In North America, other drivers will be quick to flip you the bird if you cut someone off.  We use the horn sparingly, often as a gesture of disapproval to serve our egotistical mentality that we own the road.  We'll share it, but show some respect.

Here the respect is if you don't yield to others, they will yield to you.  It's almost an unwritten code.  It is incredibly chaotic yet there are very few accidents.  If we were to apply the same lack of rules to North American streets, there would be a constant case of gridlock.  That said, it ever snowed in Vietnam, this country would be in just as much havoc as North America without traffic laws.  Perhaps we should all drive 150cc motorcycles and adopt the Vietnamese anarchic system to the roads in Canada.  We would sure get around the city much faster.

I stayed a night in Saigon since the earliest I could leave for Can Tho with a tour group was at 07:30 the next day.

The next morning I got up early to catch a xe om to go buy my tour ticket.  I bought a 2-day Mekong tour, which included a one night stay at a guesthouse for $16 US.  This is a really good deal, since it barely covers the accommodations and transportation.  I heard from another traveler that he only paid $7US.  I'm not sure what it included or excluded.  Each tour operator has a slightly different agenda.  Every tour I researched on the internet before arriving were quoted at some $250 US per person.  A tip for travelers, never pre-book any tours in Asia before arriving.  The cost is a fraction of what you'll pay online.

I got on a bus and the bus took us to My Tho, a small town about two hours from Saigon.  We made a quick stop for refreshments and changed to a larger coach.  We drove for another two hours before arriving in Cai Be, where we transferred to a motorboat and toured one of the many tributaries in the Mekong Delta.  The ramshackle homes made of pieces of corrugated tin siding and built on stilts over the river's embankment is a stark indication of the poverty stricken by the people living in the Mekong.  Not all the homes are like this.  There are also quite a number of 3 to 5-story high rises made of concrete or brick and stucco.

The boat made a stop at a small village to show how they make coconut candy.  We got a few candy samples and then got back to the boat.  At the next stop, we got on a bicycle and pedalled a short distance to break for lunch at a restaurant along the river.  I shared a grilled fish dish with a German couple. although the man was of Viet origin. (It's a bit odd, but there is a small Vietnamese population in Germany of all places.)

After lunch, we ride the bikes back to the dock to continue traveling down the Mekong.  We reach Vinh Long a few hours later and transferred to our bus.  It was the same bus we were on earlier so the driver just met up with us.  Some of the tours take you mainly by bus up to this point so I was lucky to be on the river for a good portion of it.

After driving for a while the bus stopped at the side of the road, which appeared to be in the middle of nowhere.  Just between the houses, was a path that lead to the river.  It was a transfer point to get back on the boat for the rest of the trip to Can Tho.

By now I was getting quite tired of sitting on the boat and couldn't wait to see Can Tho.  We finally reached the open section of the delta and I could see the new Can Tho bridge under construction.  Just on the other side was Can Tho City.

It took all day, but I finally made it into Can Tho by late evening.  The city was much larger than I thought and bustling with people.  The weather was just as humid as Saigon, although perhaps not quite as hot being near the river.  Walking around at night, I noticed that garbage was tied in small bags or just dumped on the curb.  Every night, street cleaners would come along to sweep and collect the garbage.  The streets were otherwise very clean.  Most of the sidewalks were concrete finished with polished tiles, unlike the unleveled concrete sidewalks in many parts of Saigon.   Usually there is so much going on, either a stall selling food or an alley way that it was often easier to walk on the street than on the sidewalk.

I made a stop at an internet cafe to find a map of the city and to see if I could guess what area I should start searching to find my parents' old house.  The city looked too big from the map so it was nearly impossible to find the house without an address.  A quick search on the Kansas City white pages lead me to the phone number of my mom's cousin.  I probably could have gotten this information from my mom herself, but being afflicted by depression and her declining mental health, asking my mom for this information was like pulling teeth.  A quick call later with my internet phone card and I had an address!  God have mercy for the internet!

My relatives lived just on the edge of the city, which I will make the trip out in the morning, but not before visiting the floating markets with the tour group.

Walking back to Ben Ninh Kieu wharf, a couple local girls tried to sell me a tour to see the floating markets.  The cost was 100,000 dong or about $7 Cdn.  If I came down alone instead with a tour group, I would have been very interested.  It would have cost more in the end, but the floating market tour is slightly better.  The girl advertised that they can take you into the streams that can't be reached by the larger boats.  I had seen some of the photos where the streams were overgrown with foliage and it had a neat thick jungle feel to it that was very appealing.

Speaking with the locals, I noticed for the first time how high pitched the southern Vietnamese dialect can be.  I stumbled on a few words and the girls couldn't understand me.  In fact, they criticized my accent as being thick.  I'll need to enrol in a refresher course in oral Vietnamese just to stop getting funny looks from the locals!

March 30, 2007

The next morning I went to get some street food for breakfast before heading off to the Cai Rang floating market.  I met up with the tour group and we got loaded onto a tourist boat.  The boats in the Mekong have a peculiar propeller attachment which is connected to the motor by a long rod.  The driver swings the rod around to steer the boat by using his/her feet or guides it by hand.  The motors are extremely noisy.  I am sure the drivers have lost a few decibels of hearing and probably a reason why you will hearing a lot of Vietnamese yelling at each other.

Viets (and the Chinese) generally can be heard speaking loudly wherever they go period.  It is likely attributed to the large population density so people have to speak up to be heard.  If you are a Westerner who has been to any Chinatown (or in a small confined space such as on a bus) and can't understand the language, I am sure you have already experienced how Asians are often yelling at the top of their lungs when speaking to each other.

When we got to the floating market, we tied our boat to one of the ships selling pineapple.  One of the girls working on the boat was extremely cute.  I immediately felt compassionate for the economic hardship she endured and bought a pineapple in support.  Too bad, she wore a wedding ring.  Otherwise, I could have offered to buy her entire boat of pineapples with her included!  I would have a cute girl enriching me with bromelain and live a life devoid of constipation!

We waited for a smaller rowing boat to take us into the thick of the floating market.  The larger boats in the market sell produce by wholesale to smaller buyers, who then sell it to the land market.  Sometimes the land market is open all night.  Some of the vendors actually sleep right on the street next to their stock of produce.

People were bombing melons, cabbages, and pineapples through little windows on the ships as they completed their deals.  The smaller rowing boats had a wide assortment of fresh produce.  After a short rowing section, our rower started the motor that no one had expected.  Sometimes tradition has to give way to technology for expediency purposes.

We docked at the land market.  The shipping dock itself was quite an embarrassment for a fellow Viet.  First off, the dock is nothing more than a narrow ramp.  Beside the ramp is a shore filled with garbage, that surprisingly doesn't smell as bad as it looks.  There is everything from organic waste to bowls and chopsticks.  It is very grotesque with all the rotting garbage, yet that is the attitude here.  Sanitary practices are often non-existent.  An enormous clean up project would need to be undertaken before people will change their attitudes on garbage disposal.   That being said, the streets are meticulously kept clean.  They are sweep by both the city workers and the street vendors.  The anomoly to this is the street food vendor.  When dining on the street, you are expected to throw out tissues and toothpicks on the ground.   As Westerns, we are acustomed to leaving wastes on the table.  Not so over here.  If you throw garbage on the ground, the cleaners can sweep it up after.  They don't want paper and toothpicks mixed in with the food waste or liquid waste, which is usually dumped into the sewer.

The tour ended at lunch with a boat trip back to Can Tho.  I decided to leave the tour at this point and spend time on my own.  The tour was heading back to Saigon, but I wanted to stay in Can Tho another night so I can visit my relatives.   I will have to find my own transportation back to Saigon later, but I would have take a shuttle and won't be able to cut across the delta by boat.

I went to the internet cafe to make a call to my relatives.  The lady who answered had no idea who I was so she told me to call back in the evening.  That was no good.  I would have to kill the afternoon before I can go visit my relatives.

[Travellers's tip:  Bring a GSM mobile phone with you if you tend to make a lot of local calls.  Sim cards can be bought for for a few dollars.  International calls can be made with phone cards purchased for 50,000 dong.  Skype is the next cheapest alternative.  Local calls however are a real pain in the arse.  Every call I make costs a few thousand dong (usually cost about the same as a coin call at a phone booth in North America), but I have to use a phone at the buu dien (post office) or find a shop that will let me use their landline for a fee.  Landlines are very expensive here so just about everyone carries a mobile phone.]

I went to have a cafe to have an iced coffee.  I had to starting to drink iced drinks without much of the so-called clean ice and just taking regular ice instead.  I wasn't too worried since I hadn't got sick yet, but I did try to drink most of my drinks before the ice melted.

I returned to the internet cafe to make another call in the afternoon.  This time I reached a woman who knew of my mother.  I told her I was in town and would immediately go to visit her and Bac Tam.  (Tam here means "Eight" as in the eighth eldest.)

I waved down a xe om driver to take me to my relatives.  The house being on the edge of the city and just on the way to Binh Thuy, I got ripped off by the driver (as they often do in Vietnam).  We had agreed on a price of 10,000 dong.  When we go to the correct street, it appeared as the location was quite a ways further up.  The street numbers were increasing very slowly so the driver lead me to believe it was much farther than it was.  I offered another 5,000, but he wanted more and he tried to play the card of being compassionate to my fellow Viets.  So I got suckered and agreed to give him 20,000 total.

Traveller's tip: Be firm on your negotiated price and always negotiate before getting a ride.  Don't cave in no matter what they say.  I think foreigners have it a little easier than Viets returning from abroad since most drivers have weak English skills.

When I got there, I met my mom's cousin, Ngat, and her mother who was 90 and looked very healthy for her age.  I was invited to dinner and while it was being prepared I met a few more relatives down the street.  Auntie Ngat (although not really my aunt) showed me my parents' old house, which has been left in tact much in the same condition when my parents sold it.  I didn't have much time to look at it as Auntie Ngat already had an agenda planned for me of all the relatives I was to visit.

There is a saying in Can Tho that goes,

"Can Tho gao trang nuoc trong, Ai đi toi đó lòng không muon ve."

Which means, Can Tho has white rice and clear water. Those who go there, their hearts won't go back.

I'll agree with the white rice, but you won't find any clear water here!  This is about as far downstream the Mekong as one can get, just imagine what everyone upstream has dumped into the river!  I must admit, aside from being my birthplace, there is a peculiar romanticism with the Ben Ninh Kieu wharf.  All the young couples sitting on the park benches and cuddling on their motorcycles fill the air with a renewed spirit that is often lost in the hectic metropolises of the Western world.  I think I will return to Can Tho in the not so distant future.