When you consider the fact that we were in Can Tho for only about 18 hours we really took an amazing amount of pictures. There was just so much cool stuff to see in this Mekong Delta town.
We woke up early in the morning on November 17th and got to see what the view from our hotel room was like. We were not disappointed.
And we had not one, but two balconies.
We were left an assortment of complimentary items in our room, which included a bag of rice and a bottle of rice vinegar. I suppose it keeps the guests from stealing the towels. And just in case there was any question that we were tourists, being white people in an Asian country and all, Lisa could always put on the free hat and confirm it.
We were up early for our breakfast cruise and tour of the floating market, a package that is offered by the hotel. We were met in the lobby by our tour guide and he led us out to the boat dock. We got on a small boat and cruised a little ways down the river to meet the Lady Hau, an old rice barge turned into a luxury boat for the hotel. We were greeted by lovely ladies in traditional áo dài as our waitresses.
We then feasted on a traditional Vietnamese breakfast of...
...made-to-order omelets, coffee and pastries. Well there was some exotic fruit, too, so it wasn't 100% Westernized.
We had breakfast and cruised along the river for a while, taking in the scenery.
Finally we came upon a huge collection of boats. We were at the floating market of Can Tho.
Our tour guide, who had dropped us off at the Lady Hau earlier, showed back up in a smaller boat, as did several other guides with boats. I hadn't realized until that point that we would have a guide all to ourselves. We got on board with our guide and the two guys running the boat. We headed into the thick of the market.
I'll let these pictures do most of the talking, but here is how the market generally works. Farmers come from their fields by small boats early in the morning, from as far away as 40 miles we were told, with a load of produce. The larger boats are the wholesale merchants, they buy the goods from the farmer to sell to the restaurants and shops. No individual buying goes on at the floating market, only bulk.
The merchant boats have long poles running up the front where they hang whatever it is they are selling. Some boats sell one thing only and others seem to sell whatever they can get their hands on. So on some poles we would see a single watermelon and on others we would see the entire produce section of a Whole Foods.
It looked like you could buy anything on the river, from furniture...
...to caskets.
Our guide then took us a little farther down the river where we docked and walked through another market area. One where you could buy a couple of pieces of fruit or a fish and some rice.
We walked through that market and down the walkway, passing the local convenience store along the way.
We ended up in a local rice noodle business. We got to watch the process of rice being boiled down (or something to that effect) to a soupy batter and then turned into noodles. A woman would then take the batter and spread it over this flat, hot cooking surface.
A few seconds later another woman would pick up the now dough-like sheet and spread it out on a bamboo rack to dry.
Later they would be cut into strips.
This was a total family business we were observing. It looked like daughter at the hot plate and mom with the racks. And baby was hanging out, too.
We took the boat again to another, larger market on the river. There didn't seem to be anything you couldn't buy there. Every kind of vegetable and fruit, every kind of thing that swims, flies, or walks and a huge variety of rice. We didn't take any pictures of the living things for sale because it was just too damn depressing.
We boarded the boat again.
We turned off the main part of the river, went under a low bridge and made our way up a small canal.
We ended our tour at the coolest little spot. We ran up against a bank in a small part of the canal and were helped off into a fruit orchard. We sat at a table under a tree, ate fruit and drank tea. There was another group of tourists there when we arrived but they soon left and we were joined by the man who owns the orchard.
He was this wonderful 69-year-old guy who was so nice. We sat and talked with him for a long time. He had actually been in the South Vietnamese army and did a year of training in America in 1968. He was an engineer who went around to bases fixing refrigeration systems. He even showed us his certificate he got from the U.S. military for his training. He kept it all these years and even had it laminated. He had no trouble talking about that period of Vietnamese history and was an infectiously happy man.
As much as we were having such a great time there, so much that we forgot to take pictures again, it was finally time to go. We shoved off after loading into the boat and made our way through the canal back out to the river and the hotel. After packing and going down to the hotel bar for a quick lunch it was time for us to travel again. I couldn't believe it was only the day before that we had gone all the way from Phnom Penh to Can Tho by boat, van and tuk-tuk.
This time we were being met at the hotel by a boat driver that would be taking us to Ho Chi Minh City, or Saigon. We hired a charter because there is no public boat service (at least that a tourist can find) between Can Tho and Saigon, and I'm so glad we did after seeing what it was like to be on the roads in this part of the world.
The ride to Saigon was uneventful, just taking in the scenery and watching the amazing amount of commerce that goes by on the Mekong River. I can't even begin to imagine what they could possibly do with that many barges of sand. We made it to Ho Chi Minh City in about 4 hours, disembarked and caught a cab to our hotel.
After a night at the Victoria Resort in Can Tho, the Ha Hien Hotel in Saigon seemed like a Days Inn. And the view from the room was definitely not quite the same.
It was already after 5:00 by the time we got in to Saigon so we basically walked around for a little bit in the
ABSOLUTELY INSANE traffic of the city. We found the backpackers district where all the tour offices were and bought a Lonely Planet guide from a girl selling them on the street. Young guys and girls selling books on the street would become a common sight the rest of our time in Vietnam. The Vietnam guidebook we brought with us,
Fodor's See It, turned out to be a pretty worthless piece of crap so we needed an upgrade. We only had to pay $7 for the Lonely Planet on the girl was selling, and we soon learned that it was because it was a pirate copy. It was still good, it was just obviously photo copied pages of the Lonely Planet guide. Sometime the pages were crooked or had shadow lines from a copier. A great deal for seven bucks. You know, for us, not for the people that put all their work into the Lonely Planet guides.
We went and had some Indian food then dodged cars and motorbikes all the way back to the hotel. I'll write more on the crazy driving and traffic in Vietnam later, but I was already worn out by it and had only been in Saigon for a few hours. After the day we had it took us no time at all to fall asleep that night.
Next - War Remnants Museum, an awesome hat and the fruitless search for sandals that fit
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