What an incredible start to the tour. This morning I met the Hoi An Express tour guide Loi and the other guests from the Vissai Hotel doing the tour. I was expecting to be part of a very international group (two Americans, two Brits, three Germans, a Belgian and myself) but found out that they were just arriving on the same flight from Singapore as me and we all needed to get landing visas upon arrival to Vietnam.

Our tour is made up of two girls in their late twenties from Perth, an Irish couple in their early thirties who are working in Sydney and two other couples in their late forties from Brisbane...Mt Gravatt East and Carindale...just around the corner from me!

We knew we were in for a fun day when Loi told us that his name meant "handsome" in Vietnamese, while the Ken the driver's name meant "not handsome"...and the jokes continued to flow all day.

Our first stop halfway into our two and a half our journey was a rest stop with a cafe and toilets. Loi recommended we try the Vietnamese version of iced coffee. It's made with very strong coffee, condensed milk and water and was very very sweet...as everything I've tasted so far seems to be...even the meats. Loi told us that Vietnamese people are amongst the highest coffee consumers in the world and prefer very strong coffee. Vietnam grows and exports its own coffee. In fact, this year Vietnam exported more coffee than Brazil.

We drove past rice fields which not only had crops in them but graves. As the farmers own the land they're allowed to be buried on it when they pass away. It was not uncommon to see eight or more graves scattered amoungst the fields. I did my best to get some shots of them, but it was a bit difficult in a moving vehicle.

Along the way we saw shops that had lots of hammocks set up between posts. Scooter riders in particular stop at the shops for a coffee then have a nap for an hour or so in the hammocks while the shopkeepers keep watch over their scooters. I find it difficult to understand how they can sleep after drinking such strong coffee, but apparently they do.

We arrived at the Cai Be Floating Market late because the traffic was a slow, so missed the actual markets in action, but we hopped on a boat and motored around the market area. Farmers bring their crops by boat to the market and sell them from their boats to shopkeepers who then take them to the land based markets on the river banks. Loi said he'd take us to a land based market to make up for missing the Cai Be Floating Market.

There were lots of interesting vessels on the river, sand barges that sat very low in the water; beautiful carved cruise boats that you can sleep on, mobile supermakets (not exactly like Aldi or Coles, but apparently they carry lots of different types of merchandise) and mobile fuel stations. A lot of the boats were powered by big car motor looking engines with a long shaft (perhaps two metres) down to the propeller. From what I could tell, the propellers sat not too far under the water.

Our first stop was at a candy making factory. There we watched a very labour intensive process to make coconut candy. The flesh is scraped from the coconuts, the milk squeezed from the flesh then boiled with butter and sugar until is caramelises. Various ingredients are added depending on the required end result flavour...peanuts, cocoa, pandan, ginger etc. The toffee like substance is then pressed into pieces of timber with narrow channels carved in it. It's then hand wrapped in a clear thin rice paper to stop the candy sticking to the outside wrapper, then wrapped in the actual wrapper itself. A good wrapper can wrap a thousand candies a day.

We also saw rice being popped to put in to other candies. The rice is stirred over a hot flame in a huge pan filled with sand. The sand heats the rice and it pops. The rice and sand is then poured through a seive with the sand falling back into the pan and the popped rice staying in the seive. It's then put through another seive to remove the husk, which is used for pig feed. The popped rice was really tasty and amazingly didn't have any sand on it at all.

We then moved on to try some alcohol...but not just any old alcohol, cobra snake alcohol! The alcohol is made from rice and once distilled, dead cobras are placed in the urn to infuse the alcohol. The rice farmers drink it at the end of the day to help their sore backs, but at 40% alcohol, I'm not sure about it's medicinal merits or wherether they're just plain plastered and can't feel the pain any more. And yes, I did try some, but I can't say I noticed any particular flavour. We also tried some banana alcohol, but it was a little pas say after the cobra alcohol.

We saw a lady making circles of rice paper that are used in the world famous Vietnamese rice paper rolls and are also made into rice paper crisps. She's been making the sheets of rice paper for thirty years and still uses the same process as her mother and grandmother used.

Back on the boat again, this time to visit an island famous for its tropical fruit. One of the trees needs to have its bark cut on its branches to make it flower so it then bears fruit...who ever discovered this was necessary? After the tour of the trees we tasted some of the fruit...the flavour was incredible, as you would expect from fruit that is tree ripened. The mango in particular was the mangoiest I think I've ever tasted.

Our next stop was "bed and breakfast" type setup where we had a delicious lunch of elephant ear fish rice paper rolls, pho (soup) and fruit.

We then journeyed to the markets that Loi promised to take us to. On the way he pointed out a bridge that he called the "Little Johnny" bridge as it was built when John Howard was Prime Minister. He'd been told by other Australians about the nickname, so that's what he'd decided it should be called. It cost AUD91M to build and he thanked us for paying our taxes. Everyones' first comment was "THAT cost AUD91M to build???" as it was perhaps two hundred metres long...

As we all discussed about how it could possibly have cost that much, Loi laughed and pointed to another huge bridge in the distance and said that actually, that was the bridge our taxes had built...he'd caught us all well and truly. Prior to the real Little Johnny bridge it took an hour and a half to cross the river by ferry, now it only takes two minutes, so I'd say it was money well spent.

The markets were very interesting, lots of fresh fish and fowls, fruit and vegetables. It was a little confronting though as live chicken and ducks were tied together in pairs by their legs so couldn't move...although it seemed cruel to us I'm pleased they weren't wandering around. Loi pointed out some "oranges" which had the darkest green skin but inside were bright orange. I got to try one for breakfast this morning, and it was nice but only slightly orange flavoured.

It was back home for a quick shower, then the two Perth girls and I headed out to have pancakes at a local cafe. The pancakes were like a crepe but crispy, with your choice of filling, served with large salad leaves to wrap pieces of the pancake in then dip in a watery sauce. They were quite nice though a little oily. The rice paper rolls were delicious and I enjoyed another salty lemon drink.

We nearly caused a major incident as we crossed the road to get to the cafe as we'd forgotten that although the little green man is on, the flow of traffic only stops on one side of the road and you have to wait until it's clear to cross the other side.