Back in the West, I can’t haul my arse out of bed in the morning to save my life, but when on holiday, it doesn’t seem to be much of a problem at all. This morning started particularly early at 06:30, but 07:00 is not an uncommon start to the day for us. When you’re on holiday for just one month, you have to try to cram as much into the daylight hours as you can.
This morning, we checked out of the hotel, dropped off some laundry with an old woman in a back alley behind Duong Pham Ngu Lao (the street of our hotel), and then boarded the bus for the journey to the Mekong Delta. A couple of hours later, we left the bus and proceeded further by boat.
The highlights today were a village where popped rice and noodles are made, and a second village where confectionery is made from coconut. It’s really tasty, so we bought some from the source.
The Mekong itself betrays a new and interesting scene whenever the boat curves around a new stretch of river. People bathing in the muddy water, houses on stilts, barges laden with goods, conical-hatted women rowing narrow boats downstream, children waving from the river bank… a real feast for the eyes and soul.
We’re now in the town of Can Tho, where we’ll spend the night. Dinner was rather dull, but we both tried a glass of snake wine, which is made with a pickled cobra. It wasn’t bad, but tasted more like sherry.
Tomorrow morning, we rise again at 06:30, eat breakfast and then head out to see a floating market on the Mekong. That should be quite a spectacle.
We’ll spend the night tomorrow just a few kilometres from the Cambodian border. How I wish we had a couple more weeks to go over the border and spend some time touring around there. However, there are already so many places that we have skipped over. We have more than enough to fill a second month-long trip to the area.