Thạnh Hóa

Hope you all enjoyed Pancake Day yesterday. We're pleased to hear that much pancake eating went on in our honour (and absence!). Today was our last full day in Vietnam - we have decided to cross the border into Cambodia tomorrow, travelling from here in Chau Doc to Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh, by boat. We have all enjoyed Vietnam and will be leaving with some sadness, and a hope to return one day, as well as excitement (and a small amount of trepidation!) about continuing our adventure into another new country....

This morning we got the bus from Can Tho to Chau Doc, still in the Mekong Delta area of Vietnam. The bus was quite nice, with air con and we had 4 seats between the 3 of us. It also included minibus transfer from the hotel to the bus station and from the bus station to our new hotel at the other end - all for 300,000 Dong (about £11) for all 3 of us. We arrived, checked in and grabbed lunch from a nearby bakery - some items that looked savoury but tasted sweet! The weather is even hotter here - mid-30s C and too hot in the middle of the day to do much. We went for a walk along the riverfront, enjoyed seeing more of life on the river and Solana enjoyed having some space to run in the riverside park and trying out the exercise equipment there. We saw a shop selling Siamese fighting fish - all in individual jars, with card between each, to stop them living up to their name. We then went to the market - a large one, with more unfathomable products than the other markets we've seen. It also had a whole section for dried fish products - Solana wasn't keen on this and held her nose the whole way round! Solana is becoming a minor celebrity here - everywhere we go, so many of the local people want to talk to her, touch her, cuddle her or even take a selfie photo with her; this has become even more common now we're a bit more off the usual tourist trail - she is bemused and doesn't really know what to make of it all but I think it makes for friendlier travelling for us. Inspired by Kirsty's cocktail suggestion, we then treated ourselves to a round of cocktails (pineapple juice "cocktail" for Solana) in the posh hotel in town, with a riverside view - they cost more than our dinner did afterwards but were greatly enjoyed. On the way back to our hotel we happened upon a shopping mall, with ice-cream and kids rides - Solana loved it, especially when we treated her to a couple of the rides, at about 5p each. We rounded off the day by starting our antimalarial tablets (generic Malarone for the pharmacists amongst you!); we weren't sure how Solana would manage, having never taken tablets before but we were very proud of her when she swallowed it down straightaway, without fuss. Let's hope this continues for the 3 weeks we need to take them. In case you're interested, we swallowed ours down with no fuss (and a big swig of beer) too!Read more