We were up early again for our 3 day tour of the Mekong Delta in which we were told included 3 meals (a lunch and 2 brekky's), two nights accommodation in a hotel, a visit the biggest floating market, and then taken up the river to Cambodia. The trip started well and we were taken by boat to a small market, then off to a small village where we saw how coconut sweets are made. Then we had a bike ride to a small eatery where our "free" lunch was waiting for us... as you can see by how i just wrote "free" it wasn't, we wernt the only ones expecting inclusive lunch... so in steps Laura! After asking the guide to call his boss (which he really didnt want to do) to confirm our lunch was included the guide accepted defeat and allowed us to eat for free! He then tried to con everyone into paying for a another "faster" boat ride to the next hotel, everyone else on the trip payed the extra but we thought we have payed enough for the trip so we would just go by bus, as we were the only ones opting for the bus he tried to sell it to us half price... we again declined! So off everone (except us) marched to this faster boat, around 5 minutes later he came back to us and told us to follow the others, in the end and to the guides total dislike, we ended up on the same "faster" boat as all the others did, but unlike all the others we didnt get ripped off. The five hour ride up the Mekong was really nice going through river villages and rice paddies with children shouting and waving as we passed, but by this point the guide would only answer to us by grunting! We arrived at the hotel at around 7pm and headed out to dinner, it was here where Lau and i had noodle soup and Sandra ordered "Black Chicken with peppers and Salt", only to be horrified when out came a char grilled baby chick complete with head head and feet on a bed of salad!! Needless to say that went back! The next day we woke to the same problem with breakfast as what we did the day before... insteps Laura again and bingo... free breakfast!! By now our relationship with our guide was pretty much dead... to the point where when it came to getting on the boats to visit the biggest floating market, we and half a dozen others from our group got put on another boat with another guide. We cruised around the floating market on a longtail boat for around an hour or so, buying fruit and watching the locals as they went by doing there day to day trading on the river, it was really interesting and nice to see. We later,after a short bus journey, caught another quite large boat up the river to our next hotel for the night which turned out to be a floating hotel on the Mekong, it was on this 4 hour boat ride where ther three of us decided to kill some time by drinking the 2 bottles of red wine that we had previously brought in Saigon. So by the time we arrived to our floating hotel we were a little drunk, and after bumping into some Ozzy friends (that we trekked with in Chaing Mai), on the floating hotel, we decided to stay up drinking in the hotel bar until the early hours. The next day we were up early to see a flaoting fish farm (i'd rather of had an extra hour in bed than seen this), more rice paper factories and then we all jumped on our final boat journey which took us 5hours, over the boarder, through customs and into Phom Penh in Cambodia. x