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19 June: Saigon

We had to be up early today, 05h30 to be exact. The floating market on the mekong river opened at 06h00 and by 08h00 most of the people would be gone. We ate breakfast at 06h00 and walked to the jetty where we boarded a long tail taking us to the floating market. It was a 30 minute drive before we got there, but the site was well worth it. Boats every where filled with fruits and fresh produce trying to sell their goods. The larger ones sometimes stacked completely full leaving one to wander to whom they would sell it all.

The scene made for amazing pictures as boats with bright red dragon fruit, yellow pineapples, green watermelons, brown potatoes and ginger and other fruit glided past. We disembarked at one such a boat to see how the lady cut the pineapple and eat some of the sweet fruit. We continued further down along the huge river. Along the way watching how people made a living, almost looking into peoples homes as we drove past. A strange sight was how many tankers we saw ferrying hundreds of tons of dirt down river. Everywhere along the way their load would be unloaded by huge cranes onto the river bank. One could only speculate that the Vietnamese government was planning to build new river banks and elevate the residential and commercial facilities along the way. If a flood came I wouldn't be surprised if few remained considering the river was wider than 150m and many houses and factories were scarcely a meter above the water level.

Funny enough all boats have eyes painted on the front of it, legend has it that a man once lost his whole family to a huge crocodile that lived in the river. The man feared for his life and tried to think of a way to chase it away seeing as it was to large for him to kill. His solution was to paint two large eyes in the front of his boat, the croc thinking it was a larger animal that invaded its waters fled away.

Our next stop was the rice husking mill, where we were shown the art of making rice paper. The rice is thrown into a pulping machine, after it has been crushed, the rice is mixed with water and left on a heater to warm it and evaporate some of the water. The thicker liquid is then poured glass by glass on a steamer with a lid for 10 seconds after which it is removed and left to dry. The whole process is in fact a lot faster than one would expect. We walked further to a restaurant where almost everyone needed to make a pit stop at the bathroom before continuing. While waiting we bought a snack, which looks like a "vetkoek" with a rice ball inside, the rice was in fact very sweet and the snack was quite filling.

Heading further down we continued for another 2 hours before reaching the second floating market, which was significantly smaller than the first. We drove around for about 10 minutes, with an elderly lady coming to sell some of her "vetkoeke" to some of the passengers before returning to the pier, another 3 hours back. Along the way I spent much of the time chatting to an American, almost 55, who was a masseur from Mane. He would work for 6 months then travel the other 6, his work as a masseur afforded him enough money to survive in America, while his plants in the backyard afforded him the other abroad. How the cops hadn't caught him in the past 10 years I don't know. He was however able to provide us with some information on China, which he had just visited. I was even able to get a 15 minute shoulder massage on the way back, with an Ozzie next in line after me.

Back at the hotel we headed for lunch, along the way passing a container with snakes. I really wanted to try one of them, but with 15 people seated around me I was afraid someone would get sick, other than Leanne, so next time. After lunch we greeted everyone and boarded the bus for the 6 hour drive back to Saigon! The drive back was amazing, passing rice paddy fields, farmers at work in their fields and crossing rivers that could easily have been mistaken for the Amazon river.

We arrived at Saigon just after 18h30, collecting our bags we headed to our accommodation, with the two Ozzies following us. In the end they decided to also stay there, since the rooms were clean and the price reasonable. First things first, we needed to get to a shop to buy some more cereal and also shaving cream, it was that time again. Afterwards we went to an internet cafe to scan in a document, before finding a place to eat, the Indian restaurant down the road was as far as we got. Returning home we packed the majority of our clothes, before heading for bed, it had been a long day for the both of us.