Sunday 27th October


Were picked up at 7.30 & put on a rickety minibus out of town towards the delta. We had a pit stop after about 90 minutes & then moved on to a ferry terminal at Mt Tho on one branch of the 9 rivers of the Mekong Delta. Here we embarked on a local heavy wooden boat about 10m by 2.5m, with rows of chairs & travelled for about 30 minutes to Unicorn Island which is apparently famous for its honey bees, where we had a tea sweetened with the local honey. Then on for a ride in a small sampan each carrying 4 passengers & paddled at each end by ladies through a narrow creek with water coconut palms on either side on the mud banks. Once again we met our motor boat & moved on to see coconut candy being made by hand by village people & on to lunch in another village. All the houses are pretty basic in design built of wood, bamboo thatch or bricks & the people appear to be quite poor. Off once again this time to another island to listen to traditional southern Vietnamese music & eat local fruits. Finally we returned to Mt Tho to take another bus for 2 hours to Can Tho, a big provincial capital on another branch of the delta. What really surprised us all was the amount of houses shops & businesses all the way from Ho Chi Minh City & the amount of people living along the way. The route crossed river branches at regular intervals & on each branch there were various types of work boat.

At Can Tho we were taken to our hotel down another narrow alley & were put in a small but clean room with an en suite & a fan but no air conditioner. This suited us quite well as it wasn't far to the waterfront & restaurants etc. After a very ordinary meal we had a drink on the river front & retired to bed. The river here was more than 500 m in width with big 50m barges the size of those on the Rhine & many other boats of all shapes & sizes, travelling up & down the river. Many of the barges carry dredged sand & aggregate for use in construction & they were almost awash with their huge loads. It is a working one with minimal tourism & is obviously very busy.

Monday 28th October – Can Tho

In the morning we found the hotel's alley was full of hardware & chandlery shops selling an incredible range of mechanical & boating equipment. We walked back to the waterfront & took another boat down river to pick up some other people before visiting the floating wholesale market moored in the river. Each boat here of about 15m carries about 10 tonnes of a particular fruit or produce which they advertise by tying a sample to their mast & then sell to retailer stall holders who buy in approx 50kg lots. There must have been at least 40 such boats with smaller ones around either buying or trying to sell soft drinks & food to others all in the river. Along the banks we passed several small boat yards & saw mills as well as a mass of shanty type buildings.

Moving on we stopped in to visit a workshop where fine rice noodles were being made in a very primitive way. The ground rice is mixed with water to produce a batter & is ladled on to a circular hot plate before being picked up with wicker rolling pin & laid on a woven bed which is left in the sun to dry for a period. Each translucent rice paper sheet is then oiled & is stacked for the next stage. It is put through a shredder machine & a lady catches the noodles, bundles them up & packs them in 5kg bags. It is a family business but looked too much like hard work to me.

Finally the boat took us to a rice husking plant & warehouse on a river bank where we saw the old French machines which process & polish the rice, quite a complex process.

Returning by boat to Can Tho we had lunch in a local restaurant & started on the weary return journey to Ho Chi Minh City much of it along the way we had come. One noticeable feature was how much faster all the rivers seem to be flowing today, probably up to 4 knots in places. This is probably due to a surge coming down through Cambodia which hasn’t fully reached the delta yet.

We were back in Ho Chi Minh City at 7pm & after a meal went to bed.