Mekong Delta Adventure

Adventure being the operative word. So we left Simon and Kathryn in Saigon and set out for the Mekong Delta. We both were a bit sick of being hurded around by tour groups by this stage so we decided to organise our trip to the region on our own. I booked us a local bus all the way to a place called Ben Tre. Now Ben Tre in the lonely planet guide is described as "palm fringed cycle rides along the banks of the Mekong Delta" and "the next big thing for tourists to see" WRONG. Shelley's rewritten lonely planet guide paragraph about Ben Tre "A city that receives ZERO tourists, very few people speak English, with roughly three hotels (all of which also do not speak English). There are no restaurants, its street food or no food. All of the people will stop and stare at you as if they have never seen white skin before and some will even inapproriately touch your skin and hair" Thank you lonely planet guide!! (Dejavu are we back in China somehow!?)

So as you can guess we did not hang around. We stayed one night and then got a local bus to the next town called Mytho. From here we took a motobike to the highway and flagged down a minibus that was going to Chau Doc (this is what you do in Vietnam if your a local and want to get somewhere apparently!) It was six hours and a bit of a mish but the countryside is always well nice to look at so wasn't that bad. Turned up in Chau Doc and guess what no tourists. Lonely planet guide "Chau Doc is a popular border crossing for tourists" .. I think im going to have to burn it. Ha. Don't get me wrong I don't care if I don't see tourists its just it makes everything harder because there are no restaurants and its harder to figure stuff out.

But as it turns out forcing us to live and eat like the locals has been a culinary delight! We've never taken so many food risks that have all paid off before! I've had some of the best tasting foods of my life in the last couple of days for less than 50p a time. Brilliant. If you ever get to go to the Mekong Delta. Pick the 3000 Dong (about 10p) Dim sum.. it is not meat like the bigger ones and as I thought it was.. its a desert made of green gooey stuff in the middle and its delicious. Also try Pho Bo (Beef Noodle soup) which is the national dish but in the south they have this brown bbq sauce on the side which is the best tasting thing ever. I wont go on but theres also this drink made of coconut milk, yoghurt and sticky rice. Absolute winner.

Anyway, the only thing we've managed to do here is go up Sam mountain on motobikes, which was really cool as all of one side is Vietnam and the otherside is Cambodia. We also visited this pagoda on the way and were expecting it to be exactly like all the others but it was actually really different. The front bit is just like all the normal ones with a big buddha etc and then you walk down a passage way which turns into CAVE. I did not see that coming. So half of their monastry and all of their statues are all in this dark cave and it has loads of windey alleyways with randon natural waterfalls and ponds. Super cool.

On to Cambodia 7am tomorrow morning!!