fruit tasting, sweet eating and hammock lazing on the mekong delta

conical hat time
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The Mekong Delta is another of Vietnam's popular tourist regions.  The word delta for me conjures up images of small sandy islands in the middle of a big river.  Well, the Mekong delta is a bit like this only bigger.  In fact the islands are so big that people live on them.  Lots of people.  Millions in fact, the town of Can Tho is Vietnam's 3rd biggest, and all basically in the middle of a river.

We headed out of Saigon on a normal bus (after spending about 40 minutes on a taxi half-way to the bus station only to remember that we had left our passports back in the hotel.  So the taxi took us back to the hotel and then back to the bus station again.  200,000 Dong later) our first stop was Ben Tre island.  We stayed in a hostel near the ferry dock.  I'm not sure how you will get there in a couple of weeks time as the huge new suspension bridge will open, ceasing all the ferries, and sending traffic to the island in through a different way.

no wailing music

and we were in a cheesy pony and trap at the time
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The hostel was nice enough, and had nice dogs and hammocks to laze about in.  We also signed up to their tour.  A 5-hour touristic extravaganza with rides in 2 different sorts of boat, a bit of walking, a pony trap ride, some local music/wailing, a coconut sweet factory, some snakes in cages, a visit to a temple set-up by an eccentric (and wealthy) monk which had a model of an Apollo spaceship, a large Vietnam map, not unlike the weather map in the Albert Dock on Good Morning and various other random shrines.  Apparently the monk liked to make cats and mice live together in harmony to show that peace was possible between North and South Vietnam during the war years.

back-canal boating
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The tour followed the same route as many others tours, however, leaving from Ben Tre meant that as was more expensive, but more exclusive, as the tour buses come down and do it all later in the day.

From the hostel we also had a couple of nice cycling jaunts off into the countryside, which was jolly nice, lots of ducks and pigs and rice paddies, and no wailing music.

Our guidebook also reccommended going to a homestay whilst on the delta.  We did this in Vinh Long (a 4-hour bus and motorcycle taxi ride away from Ben Tre).  The Homestay was like a hostel really, although they did let me help in the kitchen, overall it probably wasn't worth doing both the Ben Tre hostel and the homestay, should have just stuck in one place.  Overall the homestay was probably nicer, but then there weren't any puppies...

this boat was clearly too big for the river
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Overall, the delta was not the idyllic rural retreat that I'd imagined, both of the places we stayed were quiet enough, but you were never far from the noise of the waterways and town.

We left the delta by boat, bound for Phnom Penh in Cambodia.  We elected to save money and get up early to get the slow boat including FREE floating village tour.  The FREE tour was in fact nearly free (just a tip needed for our hard-working rowing lady.  She (anda bout 15 other small boats) row out from Chau Doc through a network of picturesque floating houses, we decided that we wouldn't mind living somewhere like this.  And then we are told that the reasonably sized places are all owned by wealthy fish farm farmers, and cost around $100,000.  So maybe we can't afford to live anywhere like that.

elephant ear fish at the homestay. yummy
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The slow boat up the river was much more comfortable that anything we'd been on in Laos, and the views more interesting on the riverbanks too.  Shame that the boat trip came to an early end as we were taken by bus for the last hour, it seems that the slow boat is just too slow to do the journey in daylight hours...