25th - 27th October 2011
Arriving in Ha Tien, 7km from the border with Cambodia on the backs of scooters, we were dropped off at a cheap hotel in the new (and ugly) part of town. We tried our best to get a bargain room rate and ended up with a whopping room on the 3rd floor with a fan, good bathroom and two king size beds. Spoilt for choice. Having a much needed shower to get the red dust off we headed out to the market to look for some food.
Lots of the food was pre cooked, un-chilled, un-covered and crawling with flies, we gave the market a miss and wandered round trying to find a café with an intelligible menu or at least noodle soup minus fly tracks. We ended up eating at a small roadside restaurant, the best noodle soup I've had outside of Thailand (and that's saying a lot, Thailand has yet to be beaten for food in my opinion) I did give Djalma my cubes of cooked blood, a girl has to draw the line somewhere.
Back in our room I worked on photos and my diary managing to post some on FB despite it being blocked. In the evening when Djalma finally woke up after his five hour nap we ate some fruit and watched the first episode of a BBC series called 'Planet Earth' David Attenborough's voice lulling us to sleep.
The next day was Djalma's birthday. Thirty two years old and doesn't look any older than when we first met, me on the other hand, I'm fighting a losing battle against my wrinkles, it's just not fair. We woke up early but stayed in bed watching Lara Croft and eating grapes. It was an excellent start to the day. Around lunch time, our stomachs growling we ventured out into the sun and back to the market feeling a bit more hopeful. We were ushered over to a stainless steel table table which doubled as the kitchen and were fed deep fried spring rolls and these other things which resembled small pies, one of the ladies snipped them up, gave us a little dish with a sweet, slightly salty, gingery sauce and kept our salad plate topped up with lettuce, fresh mint and something which tasted a lot like soap. All the while her and her friends were cackling loudly and shouting hello to each other and to anyone who happened to be passing by, even if these people weren't passing close by they would call across the market 'hello!' shout something in Vietnamese and then fall about cackling with laughter again. It was comical and discomfiting at the same time. Thanking the three witches we paid up and moved on in search for the locally grown coconuts famous for their soft flesh despite a lack of water for drinking. Finding none we wandered to a couple of shops sorting ourselves out with water, a sim card and a little more dong. Hahaa, for those of you who aren't aware, dong is the currency here - Djalma didn't get any dong for his birthday in case you were wondering.
After a coffee thick with condensed milk we sat in our big room and started planning. We read to each other in Russian accents to try and make it more fun but we had to stop after it got confusing. A good two to three hours later and roughly half of Vietnam planned we rewarded ourselves with a little break and then went out in search of a birthday beer and some dinner. We walked along the river front, past the fish market which was stinking to the heavens and settled ourselves down at a table which was practically on the water. We shared a Saigon beer, had some complex noodles and some complex rice (the complex was a mix of pork, squid and shrimp in a sweet and sour sauce) and watched the sun go down. It was so peaceful.
Wandering further along the seafront we happened upon the old part of town which looked quite charming and made up for the soulless area we were staying in with its new concrete buildings covered with large colourful squares of bad taste and all of them looking the same. We found a little bar/café and ordered a couple of beers; another Saigon for me and a ba ba ba or 333 for the birthday boy, we sat and talked to the English owner and a German guy of very mixed origin/nationalities. The old boys mainly talked beer, beer and beer, what the price was per bottle in various parts of the world - this was the bulk of the conversation actually, ze white haired red faced German would never contemplate living in India because the beer was too expensive and, as he proudly proclaimed, he drank 8-10 beers everyday this matter was of some importance to his daily budget. As an aside to the cheap beer he also mentioned ze girls as another excellent reason for his continued visits to this side of the world.
We drank a few beers and sat through a thunder storm which took out the electricity, our last beers were by candle light and then we said goodbye and got on our way.
Back at the hotel a large group of men were sitting, drinking beers and smoking. A collective cry for Djalma to join them and 'Drink Beer!' meant that he sat a while with his new friends while I went upstairs to get ready for bed. Surprisingly he didn't dally around, he came up to bed and we watched another episode of 'Planet Earth' before sleeping like babies.
We were up and out very early the next day, walking to the bus station to get an early bus to Chau Doc or Can Tho, both in the Mekong Delta. As we made our way to the bus station, a mini bus to Chau Doc was kerb crawling and we got on, it crawled all the way out of town, we could have walked and kept up with the bus without breaking a sweat. It eventually picked up speed and passengers and we made it to Chau Doc three hours later. After a bowl of very greasy noodle soup we jumped on the back of a couple of motos with our new found friend a tour guide and went to the summit of Sam Mountain.
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