The next day we woke up at sixish. After packing our bags we went downstairs to check out, and had planned to meet our bus at the hotel. There were a bunch of Aussie backpackers still giving it stick in the alleyway outside, and clearly enjoying the relaxed approach to liquor licensing in Saigon. It was a pretty good effort, as they'd been at the same bar table when we checked in the day before, and the Tiger beers were still flowing ... we watched in amazment as two of them staggered round a corner, and then came roaring out on a hired motorbike, with the passenger still nursing his pint of beer in between them. Needless to say - no helmets! Anyway - they wove off into the Saigon traffic without standing out much from the crowd.

To start breakfast, we had Vietnamese coffee, which is percolated in tiny devices that sit directly on top of your cup, with the lid serving as a saucer when you've finished brewing (must remember to buy some). The best way to order it is 'with milk', which is, in fact, condensed milk. For those of you who've never experienced the joy of condensed milk (a staple for all Zimbabweans growing up), it's a kind of sticky, sweetened evaporated milk which sits at the bottom of the coffee, giving it a B-52 effect, until it's stirred in to produce something unspeakably delicious (at probably 500 calories per cup). The Vietnamese people take their coffee very seriously, and the good stuff is apparently roasted in butter, rice wine and - believe it or not - fish sauce! You need to be a little bit careful what you order, though, as there are some pretty esoteric blends out there, including Trung Nguyen number 8 - which is first fed to weasels (yes, real weasels!) and then collected from their poo before being roasted in the manner described above. It retails for about a 50% premium on the normal stuff... and no, we haven't tried it yet!

We also ordered Pho - pronounced 'Fer', which is a Vietnamese soup made with beef, noodles, chilli, lime and fresh herbs, and is probably the fish & chips of Vietnamese cusine. Oddly, once you've got used to the idea of hot, spicy soup for breakfast, it's difficult to go back to bacon and eggs. Anyway, while we were waiting for breakfast to arrive, our driver turned up a couple of minutes early. "You have breakfast?," he said. "No problem, I come back in 15 minutes." We feared a repeat of the previous day, but he turned up about twenty minutes later. We piled into the last two seats, only to hear someone say; "What is wrong with these tour companies? We've been waiting here for twenty minutes!". We quietly hung our heads in private shame on the way to Saigon river...

At the quay, we boarded a boat - not huge, I guess a ten-seater, and set off downriver for My Tho. The trip took about three hours, and was another eye-opener in terms of the sheer numbers of people that live in Vietnam, and particularly on the banks of the Mekong. We saw old and new houses, boats of every size, shape and description, and people and livestock all the way along the banks. There were a few quiet spots that gave a sense of how the Mekong must once have looked, but generally it was teeming with life and industry. Every corner you turned showed a different family business - fishing, farming, running ferries, or just carrying out houshold tasks like washing in the river. There is so much variety to life in this place - it's amazing.

At around midday, we pulled into An Binh island, where our guide gave us a quick whistle stop tour of a coconut candy factory. Again, there was something of the conveyor-belt tour about this. First you had to see the bee farms, and try honey from the comb, then you had to go and hold the village's longsuffering python that's probably starred in more YouTube videos than Paris Hilton. After that, it was a quick tour of the factory when the family (including some kids that looked ten or eleven) were processing coconuts into a variety of different confectionaries. In a way, it was quite interesting, but there was also something quite unreal about it all - and about all these thousands of people depending on package tourism.

Just a word on group tours - for what it's worth, we found that they're not bad in moderation. Although you can end up with more cheese than you bargained for, you'll probably meet interesting people on the boat or bus and get a sense of the area you're travelling to. I think the right ratio, if you had three nights in a place like Mekong, would be to do one day with an organised group to get the feel of the place, and then negotiate your own transport and activities with a guide for the remainder of the trip. That way you'll get an overview of the route, meet some people, but also get the chance to get off the tourist track, which is very heavily trodden indeed!

Our group's guide, Sai, was quite odd. Clearly, there's been a lot of training to support the guides, and they've been encouraged to keep the banter levels up, but with mixed success. Here's an example: After a large Aussie member of the party almost got trapped in the loo on the boat, Sai called out to the group at lunch; "Hey you! Aussie! You go to toilet a lot. Maybe you not understand 'toilet' - that's OK I understand Australian - it's the Dunny! There, you need to use Dunny before we go? There it is! Dunny! Hee hee hee hee!". Weird - I guess maybe he just needs some more practice...

Sai also had a view on the population issue in Vietnam - "Hey! You know why Vietnam's population so big? We have sixty million people at the end of the war, now ninety million. You know why? Bad times after war - no electricity, no TV. So the boys and girls, they bored, they go to the bedroom. I don't know what they do, but now we ninety million. Hee hee hee!" It was a bit like having Benny Hill as a tour guide - a strange mix of funny and not.

We had a great lunch at a little village restaurant on the side of a canal, and then cycled round the island for a bit to work it off. After half and hour lazing the the hammocks, we were ferried back to our boats in sampans and on to Vinh Long, and then transferred into smaller boats for a homestay with one of the island families. At this stage, we were a group of around eleven, but an Austrian couple had misunderstood the term 'homestay', and had a minor meltdown when they realised they'd be sleeping with a local Vietnamese family in their house. They charged off to find a hotel; we made plans to meet them the next day and motored off to the island.

The village stay was great. Our hosts were Bai and Huong - a local farming couple that grow fruit and farmed fish. They have three kids, and have extended their canalside home to cater for visitors. The accomodations were simple but very comfortable, and we spent an evening with them, first cooking and then eating a delicious traditional Vietnamese meal ... apprently the secret is to cut all the ingredients into the right size and shape! It was the first night that we had a real chance to talk at length with other travellers, as well - all from different backgrounds. Rob, the 25-year old Canadian, who'd packed three months' worth of gear into a bag the size of my hand luggage. Helga and Anna, the same-sex Belgian air traffic controllers, whose 21-year old daughter was cycling from Belgium to Kazakhstan (through Iran) with a friend. Yoni and Yolan - two software engineering collegues who'd sold out of Silicon Valley at the right time to spend more time with their families - they alternate holidays with their wives. And also Heidy and Adrian - an older Swiss couple who come diving and backpacking in Asia for four weeks every year, and gave us some great tips on where to go... all in all, it was a brilliant evening.

An early night followed in the dormitory style bedrooms, and it was great to have a night's sleep with birds and insects generating the background music ... it made a welcome change from Yamahas and Suzukis. We woke up the next morning feeling totally relaxed and refreshed; a bit of surreptitious discussion established that no one had been snoring (either that, or it was me and everyone else was too polite to admit it!)