Can Tho

Well we couldn't come to Vietnam and not do the famous Mekong Delta. So in the morning we headed to Can Tho which is the larger city in the area but has access to the more quiet floating markets. I was actually surprised with how busy and city like this place was. We checked straight into the hotel and then went to find a good deal for our Mekong Delta tour. As time has taught us the best way is to always go directly to the source of the sale and miss out all middlemen. Our hotel was trying to charge 550,000 Đồng for each person, but when we went to the pier we found a guy that only charged 600 Đồng total for a private boat and the same 7 hour tour. He wrote us a ticket on the back of a blank piece of card and said 2 motorbikes will pick us up in the morning and his son will be our guide. The tickets didn't look very legit so we decided to only pay him 100 Đồng now and the rest the next day... just in case... We then wandered round for the evening and went for duck hot pot dinner on Hot Pot Alley. I think we accidentally ordered a family sized hot pot as there was soooooo much food! It came with 3 different types of noodles each with a serving for 3 or 4 people... Wups 😂 It was yummy though!

The next day we got up at 4:30am ready for our 5am pick-up for our Sampan. I'm now absolutely full of a cold so let's just say I was very quiet... Although slightly worried it wouldn't pay off it was actually a fantastic day. We started the trip before sun rise and watched the sun rise over the Mekong. Our Sampan pilot was a lovely lady who did not speak English and our tour guide for the day was a 10 year old boy 😁 We saw two floating markets Cai Rang and Phong Dien. Cái Rang was the larger out of the two and seemed to sell wholesale bags of fruit and veg. Phong Dien had much smaller boats which I much preferred as we could sit among the smaller boats and see the local people trading around us and we even saw a black Smith on one of the boats making knives! For breakfast we went to see a noodle workshop and ate freshly made noodle soup with our cà phê sửa ( coffee with milk, literally can't get enough of the stuff ha). When back on the boat she also gave us a whole pineapple that she had been cutting up while piloting the boat! We then visited a local village and wandered around with Han Junior who showed us various plants and fruit trees and then we floated down smaller canals with not anoyher boat in site. It was so peaceful and with the hum of the boat so relaxing that we kept nodding off! Finally we stopped at Mr Han's homestay where we were shown their fruit garden and even got to Kayak around their narrow canal. Han Junior laughed at us lots, firstly Will nearly toppled the tiny boat when getting in and we were pretty terrible at steering our way round the canal. But it was fun! We then just journeyed back down the Mekong for about an hour back to the pier. We got back around 12pm and it felt like 12am so we wandered back, over an hour, to the hotel for a well deserved nap and rest! I was feeling quite ill again so we rested for much longer than expected.

Later in the afternoon we wandered to the lake in the middle of Can Tho to practice our Vietnamese and watch sunset. As per usual outcame all the Vietnamese of all ages to do their evening exercise wanders. It's actually really great to see. People from the age of 20-90 always come out just before sunset to socialise and exercise in little groups. While practising our Vietnamese 2 ladies came up to us and complimented us on our pronunciation and gave us a few tips on places to see and eat while in Can Tho. And I'm so glad they did as our dinner was scummy!! We had Nem Nướng, which is a plate of meat, rice noodles, salad leaves and herbs, pickles, chilli and rice paper. You take a bit of everything, wrap it in rice paper and dip it in a scummy sweet and sour peanut dip. Yum! After dinner we decided to get a grab taxi home, a bit like uber, to save me walking another hour back... we should have just walked... I'm not sure if it was because of the location or what but 4 grabs cancelled the pick-up, and before ordering the taxi we bought a 6 litre bottle of water (we just use it to top us our smaller bottles which is much cheaper and more importantly we waste a lot less plastic), which meant walking home truly would have been difficult! 20 mins later one came to pick us up... I went straight into bed!Read more