Thới Nhật

Today was another travel day, though a relatively short one. The journey from Ho Chi Minh CIty to Can Tho, only took about four hours or so. But to get on the bus, we had to go for a bit of a mission through HCMC to find the bus company's ticket office, to get a ticket, and then get to the bus station.

After being misdirected to the wrong ticket office by the reception at the hotel, and spending about 30 mins trying to find it, we headed back to the hotel, jumped in a taxi with our bags, and headed to the proper ticket office. On arrival, we had our tickets in two minutes, and were bundled onto a shuttle bus that would take us to the bus station.

On the shuttle bus, we met a German couple, Alex and Annie, who were heading to the same place as us. As luck would have it, they were sitting next to us on the bus proper, once we got on it, It is always nice to have different people to talk to.

The bus took four hours or so to get to Can Tho, including a stop at halfway, at a very well serviced roadside stop. It included a wee fruit market, dry foods market, and even electronic sales. There were also plenty of street food vendors too.

Getting off at our bus stop in Can Tho, we discovered that we were about 3km away from our hotel, so jumped in a taxi and made our way there. Our hotel had been built in a seemingly odd area. It was boxed in by an all day street market on one side, and by a car mechanic on the other. We couldn't fault the quality of the hotel, as our room was enormous, and coated in marble. And being on the street market meant it was always in the middle of the action.

Dumping our bags, we headed out to get some food, and quickly discovered that the area is very touristy. Can Tho has a lot of tourism that revolves around the Cai Rang floating market, and we think that many people like us, show up for a day, visit the market, and then move on. Unfortunately for us, this made finding a reasonably priced meal a bit hard. And by reasonably priced, I mean by Vietnamese standards. The food was also pretty westernised.

Having refueled with some food, we headed back to the hotel so that Courtney could could go for a quick run on the gym treadmill, and so we could make arrangements to get a bus the next day to Chau Doc and arrange a tour of the floating market. On the way to the room, we visited the roof of the hotel to get a good view of the city. It was slightly scary because it wasn't so much the roof we ended up on, but a platform built on top of the roof using little more that scaffolding and concrete. It didn't feel secure, so we headed back down once the photos had been quickly taken.

Back in the room we got everything sorted for the next day, and then headed back out for some dinner at what appeared to be a pretty authentic restaurant. It wasn't. It was yet another restaurant that served extremely westernised versions of Vietnamese classics. It was not pleasant, and that was a real shame.

On the way back from our dinner, we perused the local night market, which seemed to be where all the locals in the town were. It was mobbed.

And that was the end of the day.Read more