Day 111 -

We woke up this morning after sleeping quite well, didn't have time for breakfast but showered and got ready to leave for Can Tho.

We met the German couple downstairs in the guesthouse and waited for our mini bus. The bus arrived on time and the four of us were excited about finally getting to where we had originally intended to be.

The first ten minutes in the bus were fine, then it sort of went rapidly downhill.Before we knew it the van had stopped to, what it seemed like, pick up half of Vietnam and all of their belongings. This is how they roll in Vietnam apparently - rather than do two trips, they'll do everything in one. Whereas before we all had leg room and breathing space we needed, we were now cramped in, two people on one seat, bags of rice under our feet and hay, I think, behind our heads!

At one point the horrible man who seemed to be pushing more and more people and possessions into the van got annoyed that he couldn't fit this last bag of hay into the van so just winged it and I had to move my head quickly so it didn't hit me in the face!! Pfft!

The air-con in the van was useless and I got a Vietnamese stinker right next to me - never heard of deodorant!?

Four or so hours later we arrived in Can Tho, aching, hot and sweaty. When he arrived at the drop off point, the van was completely swarmed with ready and waiting motorbike drivers all willing to take your bags and drop you off wherever you wanted to go. We felt like celebrities! Unfortunately we weren't in the mood for being papped today and ended up saying "NO THANK YOU!!!" in the nicest way possible...

The two Germans had already booked somewhere to stay which was a bit out of our league pricewise so we left them at this point and Anth and I headed to out new accommodation right on the river edge in the heart of Can Tho.

The accommodation was nice and clean and we settled in immediately. We booked a tour for the following day and went to get food as we hadn't eaten all day we were starving!

I left the cafe a couple of minutes before Anth and when he got to the guesthouse he told me that one man had just offered him either any drugs he wanted, any woman he wanted, any man he wanted or any child he wanted, yuck. After what we had seen in Thailand with all the underage prostitution (usually exploited by old white European males) we just wonder how many people took up the offer for the children...

At night we took a walk along the frenzied waterfront amongst the boisterous traders and woman shouting at each other with ear-splitting tones to their voices. Although we'd been in this atmosphere before in other countries, I think Vietnam is the place where you really feel as if you are a stranger in a new community. Nobody seemed to really be bothered that you were there and although we did get quite a few people trying to sell us things we really felt that this went on whether a traveller was there or not.

Day 112 -

Our tour started at 5am this morning so we were up and awake for 4:30am. The tour today was called the Floating Market on the Mekong Delta which meant most of our time would be on a long boat. We met our tour guide who must have only been about 16 at 5am at the front of our guesthouse. We had a 10 minute walk to get to our boat and even though it was 5am the hustle and bustle of Can Tho was no different to 5pm. People were already out and about (or probably half of them had been out all night) selling or buying goods, mostly fruit and veg.

We saw two GIANT long tails (that is R-A-T to non-Manxies although I refuse to say it!) on our way to the boat. They must love it here what with the amount of food and debris openly available for them to eat on the floor.

We got to our boat and set off. Included in the tour price was breakfast which we only found out today consisted of a dry bread roll and a banana.As we were sailing up the river eating our bread, we looked over to the high banks of the river and noticed that a young boy was squatted over the edge with his pants down having a dump! Gross!! We didn't finish the bread. Further upstream we noticed a woman washing herself in the river and then another washing her clothes whilst drinking from the river too! It just shows if you're desperate for a drink you will just have one no matter what may be floating in it!

We eventually got to the floating market and it was already busy with this mornings buyers and sellers. We didn't stay too long but we did stay in time to see a kamikaze chicken take a nose dive off one of the boats straight into the water! Ha it was the funniest thing to see, it was like it was try escape his fate of death which would be coming to him at the end of the day when the owners wanted their tea! Poor thing, tried to fly off, then must have realised mid air that chickens can't fly...

Next stop further up the river was the place where rice noodles were made. For all you noodle lovers out there just check the packaging before you buy that they are not made in Vietnam as after seeing this place you would not want to eat them!I couldn't help but feel sorry for the poor woman who were given this monotonous job of placing rice liquid on to a dish over and over again from dawn until dusk and probably earning next to nothing especially with the conditions that they had to work in too. No health and safety measures are taken in this factory anyway!

Next we went to a small cafe (which is a bit of a con really I think, they were just trying to make you buy stuff that you didn't want) where they had these tiny new born puppies rolling around. Of course I didn't touch them, god knows what they had but Anth gave them a stroke and then I gave Anth the hand sanitizer before he came near me again.

In Vietnam, they eat dog. In fact, they eat most animals that they can lay their hands on. Dog is a speciality though. One Vietnamese told us that they have certain sauces which goes with certain dogs. The thing is they will just pick a stray dog up off the street (and there are hundreds of these), kill them and then eat them that night! AND they eat everything! Dogs' organs all mean different things like you only eat a dogs heart on the last day of the month as this will bring you luck for the next month. I'd rather be unlucky I think!

After here we headed further upstream for about another 2 hours. Our tour guide let Anthony drive the boat for a while and loads of passersby were giving him the thumbs up on his terrific steering!

We got to a restaurant in time for lunch and all three of us sat down and looked at the menu. Anth and I ordered and then Anth offered to buy our tour man a drink. After we had ordered the tour guide left us and sat with another group of Vietnamese people who he seemed to know. After the meal (which was pretty rank) we got our bill and noticed that the tour man had ordered a drink and the most expensive meal on the menu and expected for us to pay for this too! Well, we agreed on the drink but didn't want to pay for his meal too! Especially when he must have ordered that when he'd left our table! So we refused to pay for his meal but paid for our own.

Anyway when we got back to our boat, the tour guide was in a right huff like Kevin & Perry style! Where he was all chatty to us before hand he didn't say a word to us now, just sat there steering the boat with a right head on. When we asked him a question he just grunted as if we'd done something wrong!! As he was being so friendly to us before this incident, we had decided that we were going to give him a nice tip but now we changed our minds. It was so petty! Obviously the price of the meal he just had to pay for was probably a day's wages for him but he should have primarily thought of that!

The rest of the tour was quite boring, we ended up going back to the floating market and sitting there for at least an hour, they obviously do this to waste time so your 'day' tour actually lasts a day.

Eventually we got back to our guesthouse and the tour guide reluctantly shook Anth's hand when he left us.

We didn't really do anything at night time, just had another little walk around. We booked our bus for tomorrow to leave Can Tho and head to Ho Chi Minh City.