Todd and Lisa's RTW trip

We don’t know where to start with this post, from the beginning or the end. The end is much more exciting… but you’ll just have to read the post below…

Ok, so we spent our last day in Dalat riding bicycles around the central highlands. It was really spectacular!! Dalat is surrounded by fields of vegatable and rice farms, very bright green. It was also really hot… so it didn’t last more thn a few hours. That night we caught a night bus to HCMC (Saigon). Our bus arrived at 4 am. They let us off in this area that was happening!!! The bars were still open with people drinking and smoking. We were half a sleep and totally confused by the situation. We found a park and sat down. The funny thing was… the park was full of people excersising. Really, at 4:30 in the morning. We just sat on a bench, stoned from our ambian, and watched as all the little vietnamese people did all sorts of calistenics. Definatly one of those moments when we are like ‘ what is going on’. Eventually we moved from our bench and into a fancy hotel to sit in there lobby. We had nowhere to go because we had booked a plane ticket for 1 pm. As we sat in the lobby, we remembered that there was an earlier plane, but we couldn’t remember what time. We said F- it and hopped in a taxi to the airport. Luck was on our side because we arrived at the airport at 6:10 and we made the 6:40 plane!!!

We arrive in Phou Quoc at 7:30. PQ is a small island at the bottom of vietnam, just below cambodia known for its fish sauce factory (exciting huh?). We were SOOOOO happy to be at the beach again!! Unfortunatly, we are a few years late on visiting there. It is already to built up for our spoiled taste, and is rapidly still developing, There is construction all up and down the beach. Don’t get us wrong, the beach was lovely, and the construction got us a cheap room ( we were attached to a room they were still building), but we know that indonesia is coming soon, with much better, construction free beaches. We did have the pleasure of running into Leo and Corinne. We stayed a few days on Phou Quoc and then headed into the Mekong Delta area by ferry, the Super Dong Express!!! The jokes were non-stop with that one!!!
The Boat got us to Rach Gia. Once there, we hopped on the back of a motor bike (with our huge packs) and asked to go to the bus station. Of course, just like thailand, we ended up at the mini-bus office. We refused and eventually got to the public bus terminal. It was quickly apparent that they don’t get many white folk ’round there!! It felt great!! People stared and laughed at us, and we tried all sort of wierd (vegetarian) food. It’s the kind of traveling we LOVE. The bus, which was ironically a public minibus, was hysterical. We wanted to take a picture but knew it would do no justice. The door barely stayed shut, the floor was pieces of scrap metal put together, and the seats were stools. The ride was going fine until we got about 20 min. away from Cantho. We were pulled over by about 12 police on motor bike. We had no idea what was going on, but they were obviously not interested in us. Then one cop got in the bus and we turned around. Then a lady in the bus started going through her bag and strapping something around her waist. We had no idea what was going on. We went to the police station, they unloaded all the vietnamese people off the bus and shined a flashlight throughout the bus looking for who knows what. We were still sitting there like “what the hell is going on?, and where is Cantho?”!!! Of course no one spoke english to tell us! He didn’t find anything with the flashlight, but he sure did wake up all the cockroaches!! Suddenly, about 20 cockroaches came crawling and flying all over the minibus. A little while later the bus driver got back on and continued driving us as we sat curled in balls anticipating the worst from the cockroaches. We finally arrived in Cantho happy and confused. When we got to our guesthouse and told the story, the owner told us that it is a cigarette smuggling route from cambodia. Apparently the lady was wrapping taped together packs of cigs around her waist. We had imagined a much more exciting story….. (but don’t worry that comes on the next post!!)
Cantho was really great. It is a pretty big town on the mekong river. We woke up at 5 am and went down to the river to hire a boat. We went out on the river and through small canals all day. Early in the morning we went through the first floating market. It was wild. everyone out on there boats selling anything you could imagine. They have poles up on their boats showing what they are selling. We would row by a boat with a pole full of onions, watermelon, squash, carrot, etc. hanging off of it. So cool. Later in the day we went to another floating market that was totally hectic. It was like a major boat traffic jam/bumper boat. again, very cool. After that, our driver took us to a farm that they make rice noodles at. They mix the rice with water, then steam it like tortillas, let it dry and slice it up. The rest of the day we drifted through the canals observing delta life.
The following day, we hopped on another bus and ferry to a town called Ben Tre. Ben Tre is just a little off the beaten path. We woke up early this morning to go down to the river to hire another boat. We couldn’t believe it… there was no old men down there harrassing us to take thier boats. As a matter of fact, we couldn’t find anyone to take us out. So we decided ‘screw it’ we’ll just go up to HCMC because we leave tomorrow. We went back to clean up and leave……………………… (SEE NEXT POST)

These are from the Mekong Delta

Mekong traffic jam

One more reason to not eat meat in Asia

It amazes us how people just ride around with their babies without any worries.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2006 at 12:12 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.