We booked ourselves on a two day one night trip to the Mekong Delta. We seem to be having a string of bad luck with the buses over here, and before we knew it, the bus we were on broke down half way there, in the middle of nowhere! We were all asked to get off the bus, but typically nothing else was said, so we had no idea what was going on. After a good 20 minutes, a lady on our tour had found some locals selling drinks outside their home, a couple of hundred metres down the road, so we went there and waited on the small plastic chairs. About an hour later, the bus was fixed, a problem with the clutch, and off we went.
Due to the breakdown, the rest of our day seemed extremely rushed...but we still got to see all the sights...

We arrived at My Tho, boarded a boat, which had to be balanced out carefully with the amount of people on board, and were taken to the other side of the river for lunch (rice, pork, veg, spring rolls).
Our first 'tourist' stop was at a small building where they were making coconut candy. We learnt how it was made and enjoyed tasting the many samples and flavours! The grated coconut flesh is pressed to extract coconut milk and coconut cream. They add malt syrup and sugar to this mixture and heat to a very high temperature in large woks over fires generated by the burning of coconut shells. The mixture eventually caramelises to a thicker texture. While it is still hot and soft, the thickened mixture is then stringed out into moulds and allowed to cool. The ordinary coconut candy was our favourite.
Next stop was a honey farm, where we drank the most delicious honey tea (honey and lemon drink). Fresh honey, bee pollen, and lemon, all mixed into boiling hot water, and some tasty peanut and dried banana snacks on the side. We also tried some Queen Bee honey jelly, which apparently has an endless list of health benefits (at a price of course). Chris was the only person to hold one of the bee hives - crazy really as he's allergic!!
Further down the river we stopped for a fruit platter (fresh mango, dragon fruit, pineapple, papaya, guava, and Vietnamese kiwi), and also on the table was some chilli salt to dip the fruit into - I thought it was sugar, so had a good dip and you can imagine my reaction! Yuk! They provided some traditional Vietnamese music to entertain us. Our tour guide even started singing at one point!
We then got into small boats, just 4 people, sat one behind the other, and two ladies paddled us down a small estuary. We were given traditional conical hats to wear to protect us from the sun. It was great fun and we got some awesome pictures.
Back on the bus, and a short journey later, we arrived in Can Tho, the 'capital' of the Mekong Delta region. Sixteen out of twenty people on the tour had opted for a home stay, including us, and were dropped somewhere in Can Tho to follow a non English speaking Vietnamese man. So off we all went, in the pitch black, no idea where or what we would be walking into. A good 20 minutes later, having walked along tiny paths, past huts and small homes, over streams, and passing by many barking dogs, we eventually arrived at our home stay. We imagined a home stay to be what it says, the two of us staying with a Vietnamese family in their home...but all sixteen of us sat together around a large table, had dinner cooked for us, and then it was a rush to grab the private rooms or share a room. Dinner was quite a spread, with traditional Vietnamese pancakes to start, followed by do it yourself fresh fish spring rolls. The only person able to speak English in the village we stayed in was a very cheeky 12 year old boy called Kin. He provided some great conversation and entertainment for the evening, although he did love playing Angry Birds on Chris' phone!
We ended up sharing a room with a Croatian lady and her son, and we also had company from a very weird, creepy zombie man living in the building, making scary noises and throwing things at us when we used the bathroom!

An awful nights sleep due to being very scared of the zombie man, but also there was a village radio wake up call at 5am blaring over some speakers!! Fried eggs with a baguette for brekki, although one guy had some extra protein in his bread....a small cockroach of some sort. We took a beautiful mornings walk back through the villages, past the locals homes, waving at the children and old ladies out sweeping their porch, and back to the river where a boat was waiting for us.
The boat chugged its way along the river and eventually we came across a floating market. Hundreds of boats, all shapes and sizes, selling all kinds of fruits, vegetables, drinks, noodle soup etc. I jumped over to a boat selling fresh pineapples and we shared a pineapple on a stick.
Our first stop today was to a rice noodle factory. We learnt how rice noddles are made and even got to give them a helping hand.
Further down the river we stopped off at a small farm, keeping pigs, but also making rice wine, or 'happy water' as the Vietnamese call it. Strong stuff! We clambered over a monkey bridge, and were invited to a BBQ, where the menu was Frog, Rat, or Snake. Between a small group of us we ordered everything, and tried everything. Chris helped pick a snake from the bucket, held it, then we saw it get smacked against the wall and chucked on the BBQ! The rat was actually really tasty, (typically it tasted like chicken!), but the snake, as it was a water snake, was fishy in taste, very chewy, boney, and scaly! Chris and Jack, (a Dutch guy we met), had ordered the snake, and managed to polish it off, although I'm not sure they enjoyed it at all. The food was washed down with many shots of 'happy water', encouraged by an adorable old war veteran who worked at the restaurant.

Back in Ho Chi Minh, we treated ourselves to an Indian for dinner, mainly because I had a dream about eating one, so it was definitely a calling! Followed by the most delicious fruit shakes we have had yet, from a street vendor, just off backpacker street, called Five Boys Number One. Chris had coconut, and I had avocado.

The next morning was the bus to Mui Ne...