Mekong Delta

Leaving our main backpacks behind in Ho Chi Minh City we jumped on a local minibus and headed south into the Mekong Delta region, the final destination of glacial melt from high in the Tibetan plateau around 4,500km away before reaching the south China sea. The Mekong is a vibrant green landscape of rice fields and palm trees split up by a water world of rivers and canals that act as the lifeline of this area – huge container ships ship trade in and out, small dugout motor boats whizz up the tiny backwaters, rusty ferries ferry passengers to and fro across the waterways and local farmers sell their wares from their boats at the many floating markets. It is also perfect terrority for cycling through small villages, along waterways and taking in the country life where the locals are still pleased to see foreign faces and smile and wave excitedly at you.
Having worked out our bus route and the company we needed to buy tickets from we arrived in a dusty out of town bus station by HCMC and waited for our bus – out of the dust strolled our driver, all cool in his white shirt with fancy lapels and pilot sunglasses looking like he’d just stepped out of fighter pilot school but instead of a F16 he got stuck with a green minibus! Our first destination was the small and very weird town of Ben Tre, we found ourselves a room for the night dumped bags and instantly got out on bikes. Went for a lovely ride along the river and out to a small village that makes coconut candy, every field, driveway and spare bit of road was being used to dry out broken bits of coconut.
The following morning I awoke feeling a bit crappy but we had a bus to catch so jumped, well clambered, into a cyclo (bicycle taxi) and headed to the bus station, well that’s what we thought we’d asked, turns out the word for hospital is very similar!! I know I looked ill, but…! From here we wandered around very confused and gaining much interest from the locals, we managed to explain to one teenager where we needed to go and he suddenly rushed off on his moped! 5 mins later he came back saying he’d asked the bus driver to wait for us and he then give us a lift to the station, so I jumped on first after dropping me off he then headed back to get Shona – our little knight on a shiney moped! We rushed over to the bus and jumped on to a mixture of pee’d off looking locals for the delay and grinning locals that found it funny that we were there squeezing in between bags of rice and numerous vegetation! From Ben Tre we headed to the town of Can Tho, explored town that afternoon and organised with a local boat man a trip out in the morning to see the floating markets….5:30 the next day we were sat on our little boat ploughing down the river to the markets, after a slow and relaxing couple of hours we finally got there – from peaceful solitude to suddenly being surrounded by boats of all shapes and sizes selling fruit, veg, flowers, grains, baskets and more. Locals bartering with one another and exchanging goods, Shona offered me up for 2 bags of rice but no-one was interested! It was cool to see and nice that no tourist tat was on sale, just locals doing their thing, whilst a few silly westerners floated by in boats taking pictures of it all. We left the markets behind and drifted off down some of the small backwaters before heading back to town just in time to grab some lunch and catch our next bus to Chau Doc.
Arrived in Chao Doc late afternoon just in time to catch a bizarre street karaoke session with lots of excited locals, bit like an audition for Pop-idol! The following morning we hired bikes and cycled out to the only bit of land more than 3m above sea level in the whole region – its called Sam mountain, by name only though not by nature, bit like going into London to climb Primrose Mountain!! On the way out Shona got a puncture but this being the land of anything 2 wheeled you are never more than 10 metres away from a repair shop… this should be the perfect chance to practise our Vietnamese – but Shona counting to 5, me stating that I’m a vegetarian and us both selling ‘hello’ ‘thank you’ probably wouldn’t help that much so instead we just got pointed at, laughed at and just stood there like wallys for half hour. For 18p our little gang of Vietnamese helpers had fixed the puncture, fitted a new valve and reinforced a knackered tyre with some offcuts of other tyres – we rode off on our way all smiley and waving and left them still laughing at us!
Our final bus ride the next day took us to the town of Rach Gia and it was the best, well scariest yet, a battered old minibus lacking most windows apart from the front screen pulled up, we thankfully got the front seats and about 30 people squeezed in the back which was meant for 15… problem with being at the front is you get front row seats of all the near misses, all the bikes it nearly ran off the road, all the blind bends it overtakes on and all the late swerves it makes to miss head on collisions with other vans or lorries!! A true white knuckle ride but kinda fun too – I have never heard a car/van horn being used so much, in the 4 hours journey it was probably continually on for at least 3.5 of those! But we made it to Rach Gia in one piece and with an hour or so to spare, so plenty of time to find the ferry companies office and the port in order to catch a boat to our next destination.