Saturday morning....7am early ride to HCM city! Ho Chi Minh is EVERYWHERE in Vietnam right now - National Day, their 60th anniversary is 2-9. The bus ride was pretty uneventful, except for the place where I bought some custard buns...and while eating them...found out ants were also sharing my breakfast! eeeep!! The Vietnam border post took a ridiculous amount of time too. Bureaucracy my a$$! The "Happy Tour" guide was very nice, and she sang us a song to ease the pain of the mid-day sun on our bus. We arrived in Saigon at 3pm, and took a 10.000 dong (expensive?! I think so...) moto ride to the blue gecko to meet Thibault, the 2nd member of the Left Handed Trio. LOL, that's the name of the jazz band Romain is in. The ladies at the Blue Gecko bar welcomed us to Vietnam with some pretty strong house vodka & chocolate milk shooters.
Yesterday was the first of a three day Mekong Delta tour. The first leg of the trip was extremely well-touristed, to the point that it was just downright hilarious. The "authentic" villagers we visited looked so drained from performing the same thing over and over! Ha ha, doesn't help that it was a cheesy Vietnamese version of "old lang syne". After a gruelling 4 hour bus trip that involved ferrying across the 3km wide (wow!) Mekong River, we arrived in Can Tho, the unofficial capital of the Mekong Delta. It was a buzzing city, with lots of patrons at the roadside restaurants and pool bars. Two other girls from Montreal joined me in the "homestay" option.
It was definitely a unique experience! Phuong was the only member of his family of 10 that spoke English. They were so hospitable! We were served tea in little shooter glasses. The best part is that they use a hollow coconut shell as a tea cozy!!! Dinner was served on the floor; a nice hot-pot of fish soup, and get this: Shrimp chips with stir fried tofu and green beans! So awesome! We washed everything down with some "you can't taste anything but the alcohol" rice wine and "YO"ed (Vietnamese version of cheers) our way through dinner. Bedtime was at 10pm, and mosquitos nets transformed the living room into our bedroom! There were some strange noises (hopefully just the pigs in the back, and not rats!) but I managed to get a good nights rest.So...I am the big headed shrimp in the Mekong Delta - argh, I think I forgot my cap at Phuong's house!!! Ha ha, the worst part is that the cap cost more than this 3-day tour (a steal of a deal - only US$26)...gaaaa!
Today, we hit up some of the more authentic spots in the delta. TWO floating markets, with nobody selling souvenirs (vis a vis the tourist trap in Thailand!). The first one was a wholesale market, the second was retail. The canals and small rivers that connect all parts of the delta make up one huge river system, in a very fertile valley.Next stop....Chau Doc, right back at the Cambodian border! Ha ha...we climbed Sam Mountain, and visited a Chinese Pagoda which some chill views of some rice paddy fields. That night, I stayed with a couple of French gals in the stuffiest room ever ("free" accomdation is like that) and had a really nice hot pot soup at Bay Bong restaurant.
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