Hi everyone! Happy New Year! And as Stu said, thanks so much for all the xmas and NY messages, presents, etc.... x By this point, we are package-toured-out! We're feeling a bit brave (or stupid!) and have decided that instead of booking a 3 day/2 night trip through the Mekong Delta into Cambodia, even though the consensus is that this is a much easier and cheaper way of doing the border crossing, we're going to go it alone. And this is what happened...... We fell at the first hurdle! It proved nigh on impossible to get to My Tho (the main point of access for the Mekong Delta) without booking onto an organised tour, so we had to opt for the next best thing which was to book onto a one day trip and then leave the group at the end of the day and not return to Saigon on the bus. So we left for My Tho early that morning and had a stroke of luck when we arrived; the hotel (and I use the word 'hotel' loosely) that we were able to leave our bags at for the day had rooms available that night, so we booked straight in before our trip on the Delta and hence avoided a repeat of the Hanoi experience! The trip started with a boat ride across to the island of Ben Tre where we visited a couple of little villages and ate hand-picked fruit, locally made coconut chocolates and Stuart had his second encounter with a snake. Luckily this time it was a "friendly" snake which he reluctantly held for a photo as opposed to one of the wild, cobra variety which showed itself in the Nepalese jungle! We then had an "authentic" slow-boat ride down the canals which feed off the delta and wind through the villages. This was lovely apart from the comical tourist traffic, all wearing those little wooden Vietnamese hats to add to the "authenticity" of the experience. Funny. After that we took up the option of borrowing a bicycle and exploring the village, which was by far the highlight of the day. I nearly fell off a number of times as I kept forgetting that I couldn't ride a bike one-handed but constantly tried to do just that in order to wave at all the little kids waving at us as we rode past (very cute). And then we got a boat back to My Tho and we were on our own, soon to discover that we were pretty much the only westerners that hadn't legged it back to Saigon! We went for a little walk and bumped into an Australian guy who used the opener, "hey, other white people, what are you doing here?!" Oh dear. Luckily for us the guy knew the ropes a little as he had been in My Tho doing some charity work for a couple of weeks, so we met him for dinner that night and he took us to a vegetarian restaurant which was like hundreds we'd seen since we arrived in Vietnam but like none we'd actually dared eat in! It was a proper local, street-side cafe, where no-one spoke English but there was no real need to anyway as you just sat down as the locals made room for you at their table and you were handed a bowl full of noodles, soup, vegetables and some unidentifiable chunks of food which was apparently tofu made to look like meat. We were a little apprehensive at first (mostly about the hygiene situation) but the food was actually pretty good and it was quite an experience to have some locals just watching us eat and others teaching us (in Vietnamese mixed with the universal language of much gesticulation!) how to eat the food properly and what do to with all the little extra bowls of "stuff" that were on the table. The next morning we were up early to catch a bus to Can Tho where we were planning on spending the next day/night. We had been told that there was only one bus a day and it left at 9, so we got to the bus station in plenty of time, only to be pounced on by local men telling us that the bus to Can Tho left at 5 o'clock that morning and there wouldn't be another one until 5 the next morning. Obviously we didn't believe them (we had heard A LOT of bulls**t along those lines from local taxi/rickshaw/cyclo drivers over the last few weeks) so I marched off to the ticket office (with only one flip-flop on as my other one gave up the ghost as I started to walk away from the mob - dignified, I know!) for the official to confirm that the rumours were true. Nightmare. So, I hobbled back to the mob with my tail between my legs and my flip-flop in my hand and we agreed to let the only English-speaker amongst them drive with us in the taxi to some high-way or other where he would hail a bus down for us. To say we were sceptical would be an understatement. After sitting on the side of the road for about an hour we decided that we really didn't want to have to go through this again the following morning to get to the next Delta town where we could catch a boat into Cambodia, so we informed our man that we would now like to go straight to Chau Doc. And within the next hour we had been completely overcharged for a seat on a local mini-bus heading for Chau Doc but at least we were on our way. We arrived in Chau Doc to be greeted by (surprise, surprise) another mob of local men offering us lifts on the back of their motorbikes. We were prepared for them this time though, and even though we had vowed never to get on one of these, we couldn't be bothered with the hassle of trying to find an alternative so we bartered for a good price (probably saving ourselves about 20p) and each hopped on, praying to whoever was listening that we and our beloved backpacks made it to the hostel in one piece. And thankfully we did. Although when Stuart went to check the room he saw something run behind the curtain so we went to the slightly more expensive hostel across the road instead. We booked onto a boat headed for Cambodia the next morning and spent the afternoon wandering around the town, politely declining offers every five minutes of a trip to a fish farm and then hiring a scooter for a couple of hours so that we could drive up to the top of Sam Mountain and watch the sunset. We then went for a beer in the only bar in Chau Doc and went to another Vietnamese eaterie where we had a craic with a couple of local boys who spoke pretty good English before calling it a day.... and what a day it had been! And that was it for Vietnam.... on to Cambodia tomorrow.... xxx