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Richard and Huong decided to join us on our trip to Can Tho, the next leg of our journey, before we travel on to Chau Doc and Cambodia.
This morning we were up before dawn to visit the floating markets of Can Tho. By 5.15 am we were on the boat and motoring up the Mekong with the stars still sparkling in the sky and a nice warm breeze across the water. Our boat was just big enough for the four of us, our guide 'Quing' and the lady 'captain' who was steering.
It took about an hour to reach the first market, a selection of large boats selling commercial produce delivered from local farmers. On the way we watched the dawn and saw the sun rise up over the river. There were a few other boats on the same mission, but we all gradually spread out as we motored up the river and arrived at different points to sail around the market. Our captain was very adept at weaving her way round the other boats in the early dawn light as we watched the traders sell their wares.
The market boats had a tall bamboo pole set up on deck, attached to which was a sample of the product they were selling. This was silhouetted against the early dawn sky to show customers what was for sale on board. Some boats had a lot of different goods hanging such as sweet potatoes, melons and mango, but others would have only one cargo and had just a melon hanging on the pole.
What was good was that there were no large boats of tourists, just our small narrow boats milling about in the water.
We then continued on up the River and entered a tributery to visit a rice noodle factory to see how rice noodles were made which was very interesting. Basically they mix the rice flour with some tapioca, water and starch. Cook it, dry it in the sun, then put it through a special shredding machine that cuts it into noodles.
After the noodle factory we visited a snake farm that wasn't so nice as the process for separating the meat and skin was not something that would be allowed in the UK. The whole snake is used and nothing goes to waste.
After this we were pleased to have a nice walk through a fruit farm, on our way to a restaurant for lunch, and see what types of trees grew all the lovely fruit we have been eating over the last few days. The one we like the most, I think is the Jak Fruit, which is like a large knobbly dark green melon, with little seed pods that you remove the seed from and eat the pod.
After lunch we had a leisurely two hour cruise back down a slightly choppy river to Can Tho dock.
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