With us making our way towards the island of Phu Quoc in the southwest of 'Nam, it only made sense to stop off at one of the local towns within the Mekong Delta. The point where the Mekong River (12th largest in the world) makes its way into the South China sea through a large number of distributaries. If you interested the River started its long 3,050m journey from the Tibetan Plateau.
Can Tho and the surrounding area are famous for the floating markets that are all over the Mekong Delta. Instead of taking the easy (but considerably more expensive) way of seeing the markets, by booking a tour through the hostel, we decided to make our own way there. Oh, and at this point its just Abbie left with us. We had said our goodbyes to Elliot, Gee and Nadine in Ho Chi Minh on the previous day, but we will be returning there, so Maj is going to write about it all in one blog.
We got some biker boys to take us to the floating market vicinity and from there we took a walk along the villages by the river to try and get someone to sail us through the markets. It didnt take long for a reasonable offer to come our way, so we followed this guy to what looked like his home and we waited for the boat to arrive. The house was built above the edge of the river bank, and some of the floorboards looked really unsafe, plus it had really unstable roofing and there were no doors, just open spaces in the walls (now this was ghetto) cannot imagine having to live there.
Can Tho and the surrounding area are famous for the floating markets that are all over the Mekong Delta. Instead of taking the easy (but considerably more expensive) way of seeing the markets, by booking a tour through the hostel, we decided to make our own way there. Oh, and at this point its just Abbie left with us. We had said our goodbyes to Elliot, Gee and Nadine in Ho Chi Minh on the previous day, but we will be returning there, so Maj is going to write about it all in one blog.
We got some biker boys to take us to the floating market vicinity and from there we took a walk along the villages by the river to try and get someone to sail us through the markets. It didnt take long for a reasonable offer to come our way, so we followed this guy to what looked like his home and we waited for the boat to arrive. The house was built above the edge of the river bank, and some of the floorboards looked really unsafe, plus it had really unstable roofing and there were no doors, just open spaces in the walls (now this was ghetto) cannot imagine having to live there.
While we were waiting, a girl dropped her detergent in the river at the back of the house near the little dock-thing. She climbed on top of a floating crate to reach for the detergent and in slow motion fell backwards into the water (hilarious at the time) she came out looking so embarrassed, especially with the tourists above her laughing their heads off.
We went on the boat and took a small cruise down the river to another boat that was stationed in the middle of the river along with a tonne of other boats. On board we were giving some watermelon to munch on and we basically just sat there in the shade chilling out with some locals. The conversation was non-stop. We arrived pretty late so most of the shops (boats) had closed up for the day and moved on. We did a get a basic gist of what the place was about so thats all we needed. When we got back to the same little home we walked through earlier. The young man there put on a home video of his late fathers final days. He looked really badly on the video, bedridden, and all of his friends and family were bringing him there wishes and love. It was the strangest thing to show some strangers but like I said before the attitude towards death in these countries is completely different to our own.
Can Tho Photo Link:
http://www3.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=4301013011/a=2264773011_2264773011/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/
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