Day 10 – Ho Chi Minh City to Can Tho

January 3rd 2009

Up early and a hearty breakfast for both of us this morning as at last everything seems back to normal healthwise.

Not 100% sure what to expect today, all we know is that we're going on an excursion to the Mekong Delta, staying overnight then back to the same hotel in HCMC the next day.

So, at 8am as arranged our guide, Nduc, who turns out to be in his early 40s and – usefully for a guide – has got plenty of stories to tell, is waiting for us in reception. Outside is Mr Lap, our driver, and that's it. The two of us, our guide and our driver in a nice Ford mid-sized SUV type vehicle. Suddenly feel very important!

The distances we'll cover today are not great, Can Tho is only 120km or so away but due to the state of the roads and the general traffic we'll initially be driving for 3 hours, then we'll do a boat trip, then another 45 minutes drive before queuing for a ferry to take us the final hop to Can Tho. Place names are going to be a struggle to recount as the scale on the map in our guidebook is too great and we're not able to jot things down as we go.

Heading out we get some idea of how sprawling Saigon (it's now cool to call it Saigon, our guide is southern Vietnamese and that's what they all call it, not being Communists and all that) is, it seems to go on forever. This is also where we see some of the more poverty stricken side, although you can tell it's all very entrepreneurial, the buildings are all over the place. As with everywhere in the world it seems, building work is going on apace, with new residential “cities” popping up all over the place. Our guide is, of course, concerned that this is all eating away at the local habitat. It seems that much of the changes in Vietnam could have the usual range of long term problems, the replacement of rice fields for industry and fruit growing just one of them... He also makes an interesting point about the weather – will sound familiar this one – rain is forecast, and it shouldn't rain. Indeed it shouldn't rain again until the lunar New Year which is 4 weeks away. Flowers used for the festival are already blooming and the farmers are worried. “Something is wrong with the weather” - said it would sound familiar.

Our first stop, and we're on National Route 1 here, a road that stretches the full length of Vietnam to the Chinese border, is to pull in alongside a couple of tour buses – queue crescendo of beeping horns as we're blocking the way – to see a temple to the unique Vietnamese religion of Caodaism. Unique is a funny choice of word actually because while unique to Vietnam is was basically invented by a western educated Vietnamese bloke who decided to combine a whole range of Eastern and Western religions to form a new one. It's certainly a good one if you can't make your mind up, everyone's in there, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus, and more.

Pressing on with just a quick stop at the equivalent of a motorway service station – think Balinese style huts on a huge scale with seating for diners and ponds full of beautiful Lotus flowers and you're there – and by late morning we've arrived at Can Be(?) to take our Mekong Delta boat trip which will last approximately 3 hours.

Having sorted the sun cream and insect repellent out we head for the boats, getting on a San Pan with about 8 seats on it and we're away. Erm, yes, the two of us, our guide, our new – very smiley – boat driver and that's it. Feeling like royalty now!

The Mekong is massive and obviously any photography will not do justice to it. It is by far the widest river I've ever seen, totally guessing that it's probably about the width of the Solent. Nduc says “it's wider in some places and narrower in others” - which is fair comment. Hard to judge though because apparently what we can see as the other side are actually islands – this is the Delta of course so the Mekong itself is all over the place.

We go up one of the tributaries just to see life teaming on either side and on the river. Commerce is everywhere, the classic houses on stilts and houseboats anchored that'll apparently be somewhere completely different tomorrow selling their wares.

First stop is a place where they make things from rice and coconut. This seems entirely strange when we do stop and of course what leaps to mind is there's going to be a hard sell somewhere. We see someone making “pop-rice”, they don't have corn to pop so they use what they do have. Next they're sticking them together to make sweet rice cakes, all packed by hand. Someone else is making coconut sweets that look like caramels, all packed by hand again, finally our guide has a go at making rice paper – best leave that one to the experts. We then sit down, drink tiny cups of sweet tea and eat some of the rice cakes and other by products such as coconut strips. Then back to the boat... I think they forgot something? Nope, we were actually taken a route that bypassed the small shop before drinking our tea. It's like you have to re-write every preconception you have of the way people will try and get money from you. They were just showing us what they do, if we were desperate to buy something we would, if not no problem, it's incredible.

Then for some real cruising, and incredibly enjoyable just stretching out and watching the riverbank go by. We sample some fruit on the boat, the Lychees were very nice as were the tiny bananas, the Mandarin not so good.

Some time goes past, no idea how much but would've been happy for it to be longer, and we stop for lunch. First we catch the backend of a music show, eat some fruit, then we're lead by Nduc down some strange passageways, that while completely open you'd probably feel a bit nervous if alone, till we reach a restaurant area. This is all for tourists of course, many other Westerners are eating there, lots are in couples only too, so perhaps we're only lesser royalty afterall. The food is different, some bizarre, mostly tasty. Highlight is the Pork cooked in coconut juice with sticky rice – excellent.

Back on the boat and we cruise some more, our guide takes over the wheel as our boat driver takes a machete to a couple of coconuts and we're soon sipping the juice out through straws.

Now I'm not trying to be naïve here, I know full well that all this smiley excellent service is to get a good tip at the end and our boat driver certainly gets one. The point is that nobody is hard selling to us to try and get our money, what they're doing is making us feel incredibly important so that we feel like parting with our money, and it works. We feel great, they get paid, and we don't have strange wooden objects we've got to lug around the rest of S.E. Asia incurring extra baggage penalties! (Sorry everyone, no strange wooden objects will be handed over on our return...)

Mr Lap meets us off our boat journey and it's now back on the road to Can Tho. We have to queue for a while to get a ferry, doesn't bother us in the back but I'm certainly glad I wasn't driving. Here there are people selling for all they're worth but having thought we'd probably be surrounded, nobody even looks at us. They're selling corn on the cob and strange sounding pre-cooked and fermented pork stuff which even our guide says you need a strong stomach for. Westerners obviously don't buy this stuff and they're doing a roaring trade with the locals anyway.

The ferry journey is approximately 15 minutes, we see a bridge the Japanese are building in partnership with the Vietnamese. Apparently a whole section of it collapsed a couple of years ago, over 60 were killed, but they're working on it again now. It'll be 10 miles long(?) when completed. Later Nduc muses that the Japanese are great builders, but not in Vietnam. Apparently they built a tunnel in Saigon which sank!

Can Tho (It's Cantho in all the guidebooks, we have an obsession with putting Vietnamese names together into 1 word it seems. Viet Nam, Ha Noi, you get the drift) is a city that's been upgraded to be on a par with Saigon. Population wise though it's about the size of Manchester and according to Nduc there's no international industry here. Our hotel is the first 3* hotel in the Mekong Delta and is basic but fine.

Dinner is at the Nam Bo restaurant which has been booked in advance by Nduc and seems to be exclusively used by tourists. Our table on the outside balcony doesn't materialise, we'll have to sit indoors (no problem to us) and Nduc is not happy. We convince him we're fine and can sit. He hangs around recommending items off the menu, I've invited him to eat with us but he's already had a street meal so declines, then Sarah realises that he's actually waiting for some sort of sign from us to “let him go” for the evening, so let him go we do – 7.30am tomorrow to see the floating market, ouch...

Dinner is good, we share the house speciality for main course which is the “steam boat” - a sort of savoury fondue, but instead of the liquid being oil to fry the food it's a bubbling sauce which is transferred to your rice bowl. Very tasty. 3 courses, 5 beers, ahem, £13 for two.

Quick look at a major statue of Ho Chi Minh and it's back to the hotel for an early night ahead of the even earlier start we'll be having tomorrow.