26th - 27th October 2011
Vinh Long is a bustling town in the Mekong Delta famous for home-stays with families, a floating market and orchards. Having arrived in the out of town bus station we were quickly chaperoned and courted by the touts flogging said home-stays and tours on the Mekong, leaving them behind we walked in what we thought was the right direction and two minuted later moto drivers who had been quoting 3USD for a ride into town were now trying to take us a for a dollar. We hopped on and asked to be taken to a guest-house, a cheap one. We weaved through traffic and got partially soaked by other scooterists going faster than they should have been in the water = parts of town were flooded, but not very seriously. Our drivers didn't understand any English and certainly didn't comprehend 'cheap hotel' with a little help we eventually found one, thank the Lord.
Djalma went out for fruit while I did some yoga not really prepared to get up earlier than 4am to do it the following morning, when his Lordship returned with bananas and very ripe Sharon fruit he told me about the tour he had booked for the following day. After umming and ahhing we decided against the home-stays as most of them were just bungalows with meals included, they sounded more like privately owned guest-houses than an actual stay with a family. After writing for an hour we tucked ourselves into our separate beds (they were just too small for too hot bodies to share, wink wink nudge nudge) and got some shut eye ready for a 4.30am start the following day.
We got up when it was black, after a quick shower and a couple of bananas we headed to the docks where we met our boat driver and the Czech couple who were sharing the same tour, we set off into the sunrise, which was beautiful.
It took an hour to get to the market which wasn't as busy as we thought it would be but interesting none the less. Boats pushed along by tough old ladies slipped nimbly through the water pulling up along side larger boats along with motorised versions of the same boat.
It was all wholesale produce not a souvenir in sight. The water was lined with houses/business/metal shacks on stilts the sky directly above bristling with antennae. We headed toward the cathedral, the main reason we had decided to come to this particular market rather than the biggest market which was in Can Tho.
We headed down another waterway and stopped off for the first of our visits; the bee farm.
Walking up a little path we turned left into a open fronted shop with three beehives in the pathway, a guy came up, pointed to the boxes which had a few bees flying in and out and helpfully stated 'bee farm, honey'. Djalma lifted the rather docile bees (I can happily report that no one got stung) and posed for a few shots holding the bees up to the light for a better photo.
Inside we had a quick look at the tourist tat and then sat down to little cups of heavily sweetened jasmine tea. The honey was actually very good but travelling with our world on our backs as we are, it is much better to keep those worlds small and light rather than weighed down with the little goodies we come across. We also tasted royal jelly and pollen which, according to the laminated information leaflet given us, helped all manner of ailments, including what I think as the top three afflictions; impotence, hair fall and being over weight. Truly a miracle 'cure all'.
We thanked the lady who, although a little pushy, didn't give us the hard sell and continued on our way to the coconut candy factory. I was quite excited about this, having insisted during our planning that we should stop at Ben Tre which was famous for the stuff. Funnily enough this place also had plenty of souvenirs on sale, as well as it's confectionery.
We were half heartedly shown through the system, told the ingredients (coconut cream, sugar, rice and some kind of goo) given a shot of something that looked a lot like what I used to clean my paintbrushes with, it tasted like it too. We sat down and were given a little dish with peanut brittle, sugary ginger, brown banana things and more of the coconut candy as well as more tea. It all tasted good but even though it was cheap by western standards I think it was rather overpriced by Vietnamese standards, so once again we thanked our hosts and left empty handed.
We got back on the boat and were taken to a meeting point with one of the sinewy ladies who rowed their boats at a sedate pace, we clambered from boat to boat and settle in for a ride round the backwater canals.
We were each given a coolie hat much to my delight, I was quite surprised to see that lots of women still wear these conical head gears of exotic loveliness and it tickled me rather a lot that I got to wear one. After a flurry of self portraits we settled back into the rhythm of the lady's oar strokes and enjoyed the green river banks and other passing boats.
After a good half hour of alternately boiling in the mid-morning sun and then sighing relief when in the shade, we clambered back in the boat we were taken to another island where there was a bonsai garden. There was nothing bonsai about the bonsai garden, there was a fair bit of topiary but no bonsai, again we sat down to tea and this time a plate of guava, pomelo and fresh fresh mango was provided for us to nibble on - suddenly the lack of breakfast didn't seem quite so bad – and we sat and had a nice long chat with our fellow tour goers.
Arriving back just after 10am and five whole hours of tourism we headed straight to the market to find some proper lunch/breakfast food, an egg baguette later we were back, showering , packing and leaving for the bus station.
We walked there, it was only a few hundred metres and when we got to the station we were told by a helpful man that there were no buses to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC/Saigon) and that we had to go to the bus station 4km outside of town. We walked over to the shade to think about what to do and asked a lady behind the counter if there were any buses to HCMC, yes at 12pm (a tiny thirty minute wait) feeling rather let down and a bit green - we're not always taken in so easily I promise! Djalma asked the guy who had "helped" us why he lied, of course he was a moto driver, but he did have the grace to look a bit shame faced while he muttered to himself wandering off in search of fresh blood. I went and got more baguettes and we sat and waited for our mini van to Saigon.
We had a minor nutter driving this time, he didn't come close to running anyone over although we had some sharp breaks so we didn't end up in someone else's boot. All the motion, swerving and general being a car was doing horrible things to the lady sitting behind us who vomited copiously into various plastic bags throughout the three hour trip, the only thing I had to give her was my last piece of chewing gum, I hope she didn't think it was medicine. Poor woman. We got off somewhere in town, no idea where we were save to say that we weren't at a bus station. We got a bus in the wrong direction stopped, had some noodles got some advice and another bus in the right direction and found ourselves in Pham Ngu Lao, a cheap area to sleep. After a fair bit of walking around and dispirited bargaining in the back street hotels we eventually found a room for a bargain 7USD per night and climbed the four flights of stairs to our third shower of the day.
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