No blogs posted for several days due to difficulty accessing internet and decline in my health. The sore throat I previously referred to disasppeared the next day, but came back with a vengeance the next day and turned into a general upper respiratory infection. I started my trusty antibiotics three days ago and am slowly improving with symptoms changing each day. Tomorrow I anticipate I will probably lose my voice. I woke up this AM with one eye stuck shut, so went to the local pharmacy with the guide. Even with his help, the pharmacist was of no help, but after surveying her inventory of eye drops chose the only one that was actually an antibiotic eye drop (chloramphenical for those in the know), and plunked out 4000 which is twenty cents American.

Today has been Day 2 of my Innoviet 3 day Mekong Delta tour. Last night was a home stay. Today we were up early and out at 6:30 AM to visit the local medium sized floating market for fruits and vegetable. These boats put up a bamboo mast and hang items from the mast indicating what they are selling. We were in one of the less than new and questionably assembled Vietnamese boats circulating among the market boats. A small boat with a woman pulled up next to us and provided breakfast, different than the typical pho (noodle soup) - we had a sweetened rice dish, some gelatinous rice cakes and fried banana (I think) in some kind of creamy sauce. Then we went onshore for coffee, served differently - small glasses of expresso set in a cup of hot water. We wandered through the market where I bought the eye drops and some underwear because I thought I had lost mine (which I later found). However, the experience was novel, the underwear was inexpensive, and convincing the woman I did not need any of the various bras she pulled out to show me was fun.

Next stop was a several hour bicycle ride through the countryside. We visited a pagoda, rode past homes, rice and fruit fields, stopped for sugar cane juice, a local delicacy, and visited a brick factory. The path was slippery and muddy at times and I had several falls, no injuries, just a generous coating of mud on one foot. Then my camera on its own flew out of the bicycle basket, fortunately with no real damage other than a scratch on the UV filter. (I have the most difficult to find camera filter size and as were walking back from dinner, we passed a very small camera store. I went back to the hotel to get the camera, returned, found the store closed but could see the woman inside, knocked, and,amazingly, she had the right size for 50,000 dong ($5). Just after we returned the bicycles and got on the little ferry boat to come back to the home stay, the previously lovely day turned into a terrible storm and we got totally drenched on the walk from the ferry to the home.

We had a nice lunch, which appeared to use up leftovers from last night - fried rice, soup with pineapple and squash, fish, and pomelo for dessert. We then had some Vietnamese siesta time in the hammocks and at about 2:30 left for the boat landing again. Shortly after we arrived, the "ferry"boat to Can Tho arrived, a long wooden boat filled with baskets of fruit, a few passengers (four other tourists) and many baskets on top). The boat ride of two hours had little of interest, but it was nice talking to the other people (an older Dutch couple on a bicycle tour of Cambodia and Vietnam and two women, one French and one from Quebec).

Once at Can Tho, we settled in our hotel. My tour traveling companion, Veronique, and I went out for dinner, shared a lau, chicken hot pot, and now here I am writing this having taken all of my medicine for the night and hoping for the best for the night and tomorrow. We need to be up at 5:30 for a 6 AM breakfast and 6:30 departure to the Cai Rang floating market, largest in the Mekong