Can Tho – Tour groups are bad
In Chau Doc, we decided to take a tour of the Mekong Delta, which would take us all the way up to Saigon. We were promised floating fish farms, minority villages; all in all, it sounded like a tour to remember. Rookie error.
The first stop, with me hobbling along after the rest of them, was a fish farm. Now, what do you envisage when you hear the words ‘floating fish farm’? I was thinking large rooms, different grades of fish. I was not expecting one room with three holes in the floor. Judging by the stunned but bland looks on the rest of the group’s faces, I don’t think they were, either. We all stood round and looked at three holes. Even our guide sort of gave up, and just said “Erm, so this is the fish farm. There are a lot of fish here”. The most exciting thing was when a fish made an escape bid, and had to be kicked back into the hole by Richard and Dean.
Next on to the minority village. Even worse, if that was possible. “So now, this woman is weaving a towel”. Cue woman springing into life and weaving about three lines of a piece of fabric. “Erm… so that’s it. Look around the village. You can go into the mosque, no problem”. I asked if it was ok for us females to go in. “Yes, yes, no problem. And you can take photos, no problem. Because you are tourists!” We went, we saw, we ended up sitting on a bench because there was nothing else to do or see.
And that was our exciting tour for the day. We got on the bus to go to Can Tho, the capital of the Mekong Delta area. This was actually a lovely town, not very touristy (apart from people stopping off on similar tours to ours), but mainly it was just a load of families, out for the weekend. We did have some excitement when we stopped for lunch on a balcony overlooking the Mekong. I looked up and saw flames shooting up from one of the houses in the shanty town situated along the river. The flames got really high, and it looked quite hairy at one point as all the houses along there were wood. People a few houses along started throwing all their posessions in boats, which was pretty heatbreaking to see. Buckets were being chucked on the fire which didn’t look as if they could make a difference but fortunately it must have done, as the flames died down after 10 minutes or so.
We were under instructions to be up early the next morning, so we duly set our alarms and were waiting downstairs at 6.30am. Slightly annoying, then, when the bus didn’t set off until nearly an hour later. This day had better be better than the last one.
Our first stop was some floating markets. Now these were good, and quite fun to see all the people heading out on their boats to do the day’s shopping. All the boats selling things had bamboo sticks with, say, a pineapple on the top, to display what they were selling from a distance. Much more fun than going to Asda. We then went onto a rice noodle factory where, you’ve guessed it, they make rice noodles. It was hot and steamy, but quite interesting – good to hear that they look in disdain on the dried noodles that are exported overseas. Only fresh noodles will do for the Vietnamese, apparently.
Back on the (cramped) bus, we set off in the direction of Ho Chi Minh City (though most people still call it Saigon. Most people started dropping off to sleep, only to wake when we stopped at an incense factory. Not so much ‘factory’ as ‘room’, though. We’d all pretty much given up by this point – I only went in, took a few photos of the pretty pink incense sticks, and went back out.
Our final stop was at a Bonsai Tree place. This turned out to be a restaurant, surrounded by trees. And pretty big trees, frankly. None of this little bonsai nonsense – these ones would put Pennington Park to shame. Not really on a par with, say, the Taj Mahal or the Terracotta Warriors or Angkor Wat. To say the least. Still, they sold Pringles and Cornettos, so every cloud and all that.
Luckily, before any other horrors or dullness could be inflicted on us, we were arriving in HCMC. And just from one look out the window at the hoardes of people and streams of motorbikes flying by, I could see this was going to be the very opposite of dull.
Tags: Travel, Vietnam
Suzanne
Hi Suze
Seems quite an inauspicious start to your Vietnam adventure.
I will be very surprised if, by the time you leave, that things haven’t picked up.
Hope your toe is getting better and that your mobility is not too restricted.
Love
Mike
89921 Blog Verification…
89921…
Hi Suze, hope you enjoy the rest of Vietnam[your Uncle Mike Sanderson enjoyed it didn’t he? so keep blogging!]
sorry about your foot, hope it is not hurting too much bye and God bless love Angela xx
what a good blog