Well I'm back in civilization after a few days in the Mekong Delta. We left Hoi An at some ungodly hour on the 2nd. At 3am in fact, which is the first time I've seen any road in Vietnam empty of traffic. We had another of those days of multiple forms of travel; bus to DaNang, plane to Ho Chi Minh City, bus to Cai Bei, then boat along the river to our home-stay. I did get to sample a Vietnamese motorway service stop which was miles ahead of any Welcome Break you'll ever see, helped by the tropical weather and outdoor setting of course. There was another moment of over service as there were at least three waiters for each customer (and consider there are 18 in our group alone) and they still got the order wrong. Probably because the guy taking the order couldn't speak English where as the boy he told the order to could. Why they didn't swap jobs is beyond me.
The Mekong was a surprise as it was so much bigger than I thought, over a kilometer wide where we were. It's also weird to see a river that is still so totally part of peoples life used as a thoroughfare, for fishing, trading and even for washing and drinking but that's probably not to be recommended. Actually totally not to be recommended judging by what was floating in it. Even though the river's a kilometer wide our boat's captain still managed to hit three other boats in the course of the day. No sinking luckily although I thunk you'd struggle to sink in the Mekong with all the mud and trash.
We did a few touristy things on the river, including some bartering for goods with the locals. As you can imagine with a group of British tourists there was a dearth of volunteers for this bit. The British just don't like bartering or haggling and even when we do het the price down we just let the seller keep the change, which might be defeating the object a bit. We had a different guide for this bit, a tiny lady called Phuong who had an obsession with tropical fruit. Every lace we stopped, the popped rice factory, the garden centre, the historic house, we had to "please now enjoy more tropical fruit". I really never want to see another piece of jackfruit in my life. It's all about sampling everything that grows in the Delta, which seems to be pretty much anything you want to plant. It's the rice/fruit/vegetable basket of Asia apparently.
We spent the night at a hone stay on a beautiful 19th century traditional house. All wood inlaid with mother of pearl and imported French tiles. The people who built it must have been loaded until the state took their land away and shared it with the locals. See communism does work...
Even though the house was beautiful the bits we were in were a bit more basic. I thought for minute we'd been called up and shipped to Khe Sahn. Camp beds, five to a room, cold showers and mozzie nets, which are a bit of a booby trap when you need a pee in the night if you're not used to them. We were entertained with more traditional music but this time the band was all pizzaz, all tits and teeth as they say in musical theatre.
Considering the camp beds and lack of aircon I slept really well. But that could have been because of the 3am start I guess. I'd have slept even better if the locals didn't turn up at 6am on un-silenced mopeds.
We spent the rest of the morning being rowed around the island by old ladies in row boats. They stood up to do it which was a bit odd but also faced forwards to row which makes much more sense than in Europe. Wise though considering the number of boat related incidents we'd already had. We also had to wear conical Vietnamese hats. Now I'm all for trying the local flavor but nothing looks more ridiculous than a European in a coolie hat.
I suspect that's why we had to wear them.
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