We left our tropical island (Phu Quoc Island) on Sunday (9th) and made our way to a place on the Mekong Delta called Chau Doc. It's right on the Cambodian border. We had quite an exciting trip to get there involving a battered old ferry (where they ripped Uncle Rick's Back Pack!), two lots of Xe om rides (Scooter taxi's) and a three hour trip on a smashed up local bus, which had it's rear window glued in!

Chau Doc was ok, but to be honest a lot of the towns and cities are the same, noisy, dirty and busy! They are also fairly geared up towards tourists, which strips them of some of their former individuality. We've worked out that you have to book yourselves onto tours to get out of the cities and see some of the more interesting sites. So we booked an early morning boat trip down the Mekong river to look at some of the floating markets and the floating villages. The floating markets are run by kind of sea/river gypsies that live on their boats and bring in produce to the towns from further a field. The locals then potter out on smaller boats and haggle for the various wares.....

The floating villages are basically fish farms, Vietnam style. The houses (big shacks really) are floating on barrels, timber etc and have massive cages underneath them where they rear thousands of fish. When the fish are big enough they either scoop them out to eat or transport them via the Mekong to Saigon.

We also checked out a little Cham community (Cambodian origins I think), where we bought some hand weaved scarfs etc.....it's a bit of a set up, where you wander in and there just happens to be a native on an ancient wooden loom with loads of produce knocking about but it's about two quid to buy something and these guys are pretty poor by our standards so parting with some cash isn't the hardest thing to do. All in all it was a good trip with only Krista and I on a little vietnamese long boat for three hours or so and all for $6 each.

We then left for Ho Chi Minh City, we went in a little bit more comfort as it was a 6 hour trip. All the local cafes and hotels can book you onto coaches, with air con etc It''s cool in principle but the comfort has the edge taken off it when you realise that you are in for a 6 hour vietnamese tv spectacle!! The tv seems to consist of very very very very bad vietnamese televised panto! It's horrendous. The volume goes up and that's it for 6 hours :) These little folk just love noise.

We only had a quick stop over in Ho Chi Minh city but our impressions where that it was cleaner and a little less frantic than Hanoi and with out doubt geared up for Westerners. Which actually was a welcome change as it makes things a little easier.

From Ho Chi Minh city we then headed towards Dalat......a nice, refreshingly cooler climate!

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