Mekong

Went on a really good public tour of the Mekong Delta. Had been hoping to do a private tour, but the costs was just way too much and Tamsin & I couldn't find anyone else who wanted to go on a private tour,or who had the time. Ironically, after we'd booked and paid, we met a couple at the deskof our hotel who would have been interested,and we managed to find Claudia who'd been wanting to go all along... typical!

Still the tour was excellent, the guide was really knowledgeable and friendly,and I really felt like it was worthwhile. The best bit was staying in a homestay like I'd done in Sapa. We stayed with a guy called Phong, and his family.It was about a 10 minute walk in the dark across 'monkey bridges'(small bamboo log briges over streams) and paddy fields) from a 20 minute boat ride downriver from the 10 minute bus ride we took from the hotel where all the others were staying in the centre of Can Tho - the South's second largest city, and hence not much differentto Saigon in terms of a different more "rural" experience. We had a great dinner with the family,and then stayed up for a good part of the night drinking the local rice wine and banana wine spirits, before going to sleep on thin mats under mosquito nets in bamboo huts, and waking up early to go for a walk in the rice paddy field. It was a really great experience.

It kind of made up for the fact that the most picturesque part of the tour, in a small rowboat down a Mekong tributary to a longan and dragon fruit orchard, was completely drowned out by rain, and I couldn't take any photos...

I also saw a coconut candy village, a rice wine village, a bee keeping village, and an incence making shop, the floating market, the regular market as well as doing lots of cruising down 2 of the main Mekong rivers.