Day 49

Ho Chi Minh > Mekong Delta

For breakfast we thought we'd go back to the Café Appartments as we quite liked it last time depsite it being a little spenny. We grabbed over and explored the whole building looking for a different café. The issue is alot of them either did full meals or no food atall so we went back to the old classic. Yet again I went for the drink and 2 cakes strategy - this time a berry tea with an apple crumble doughnut and a "Ferrero Rocher" cake. They were both super tasty of course but so sickly.

Afterwards it was time for some hardcore haggling at the Ben Thanh Market. Infamous for its busting narrow corridors between the stands selling all the fake merchandise that your heart could desire. But this wasn't time to mess around. No sir. Strategy was of the upmost importance. Step 1: know what you're looking for. For me, I wanted some colourful crocs, a patagonia mesh back cap, and a big and bright North Face duffel bag. It was going well, I scored a nice looking Patagonia cap for just over £3. But that's when the plan started to go awry. I happened to clock some neon yellow Nike running shorts. Now if anyone knows anything about me, 2 of my favourite things are bright colours and pretending that I run. Me and the lady enter a fierce battle of negotiation. I was fierce but she was flirting with me probably just to drive the price up. Her slapping my ass aside, I stayed strong and we settled on just less than £6.50. Decent deal but if I stayed stronger I could have driven it down a bit more. Okay its croc time. I didn't know exactly what colour I wanted but it had to be bold and bright. Unfortunately as they all stock very similar knock-offs, the crocs were are the same mundane colour (atleast the ones that would fit me) and I had to abandon ship.

It was now time for the final showdown for a duffel bag. Me and Alfie both wanted one so we could use that to our advantage. We also both wanted a bright colour in the largest size which let us narrow our choices a bit. Eventually we found a seller who had a bright large duffel as most of the brighter colours were for the smaller ones. Unfortunately we both wanted the yellow one so either we matched or someone had to get a different colour. Deciding to accept the future confusion when we had our climbing gear in the van, we got matching duffs for just over £11 each. We'd have liked to have knocked it below a tenner but Alfie showed our hand too early that we wanted 2. Que sera sera!

We grabbed some lunch (more banh mi for mi) and grabbed our bags before leaving to get our bus to Can Tho. Unfortunately this was where I made the grave mistake of leaving my sliders behind - to be continued! We hop on this bus and lemme tell you - it was nice. I would argue the nicest bus / minivan we had been on so far oooh we were living la vida luxury and I made sure I enjoyed that trip the best I could. We ended up in Can Tho, passing where our homestay is so we had to get a grab back up. Google Maps said we needed to get a ferry up to cross the river without having to do a big loop so hopefully a driver would accept our ride. Luckily it wasn't long before he cruised up in his sleek new car and we were on our way. Not knowing what he was planning, I saw that he continued following the GPS towards the river crossing. It wasn't until we got there that he looked very confused and asked us for the address. For a tense little while we weren't sure what was gonna happen. He spent some time looking up something on his phone, then calling someone, then he ended up leaving the car and running over to presumably the ticket office. He came back with a receipt and gave us the thumbs up. Onwards! Well onwards when the ferry was ready to board.

Eventually after a crossing and another drive we had been delivered to our guesthouse and we tipped decently after probably ruining this guy's evening. As we checked in we were given the menu straight away to order our food as it was somewhere between 8 and 9. Whilst we waited we checked into our room where it seemed that our triple room was designed for a couple and a kid and not a fully grown adult. We played some darts whilst we waited - which was more of a throw and pray instead of play but it was actually quite fun hurtle the darts and try and get them to stick. We say hello to the cute little dog on the property and eat our yummy dinner then head to bed. It was an expensive day with all the travel and shopping but worth it I think.Läs mer