Our first taste of Vietnam, and a return to our old friend the Mekong river, now split into many sub rivers across this flat plain.  Where life revolves around the canals and waterways which riddle the area.

Day 158: To Vietnam!

We had to be up and out fairly early, but not as early as Steve and Marilyn.  We thought we’d been told that the pick up would be at 8 and that we should be back at the pier at 7.30am.  Knowing we’d want some breakfast, we left a bit earlier and arrived about 7.10am.  A quick look around offered only one spot that we could have breakfast at and still be really close to the pier, so we had to settle for the expensive restaurant we’d had drinks at a few days before.  At nearly £20 for breakfast it was super expensive for SE Asia.  As we waited for it to come, thinking we had until 8, I saw a lady picking up rubbish from the beach (which was a total mess).  We still have some of our compostable rubbish bags on us so we grabbed one and went to join her.  It’s fun how these things snowball, another lady joined us soon after, and two guys joined them after we’d gone back to eat our breakfast. 

We had an issue though.  When we arrived, there was no one at the ticket office.  Whilst we thought that we had till 8, it turned out that the bus actually left the bus station at 8, and our pick up was due at 7.30.  We found this out soon after our food had arrived, causing us to have to stuff it in our faces.  Mine had come last so I had to put it into one of our plastic boxes to eat on the road!  We were marched up the road to the minibus, which then drove five minutes to their office, where we changed into another minibus.  Not sure why. 

This then drove around a bit, before driving back past the office.  Perhaps the driver forgot something?

Finally we were on our way.  It’s not a simple journey though, and we had to change bus when we got to Kampot.  The wait was no more than ten minutes though.  There were separate buses going to Kep and to Ha Tien, but our Ha Tien bus diverted off the main road and dropped some people off in Kep anyway. 

We arrived at the border soon after rejoining the main road, where we were reunited with the minibus which left around 5 minutes before us taking people to Phu Quoc.  The bus driver asked us all if we had e Visas, which we did, and then asked for our passports, which we all handed over.  He disappeared into a building whilst we stood about for a while.  Presumably getting exit stamps but we have no idea why it took so long.  There were quite a few vans waiting though, and a bus full of Chinese tourists arrived and needed processing.  Somehow they were back on the road before us though…

The Phu Quoc minibus had been turfed out of the van with all their bags and walked up the road to the next station, we felt pretty smug in our van, until we were also turfed out with our bags. 

This next building had two desks, we’d missed the briefing at the station before as we were trying to stay near the kids in the van (which was moving off at the time…).  Everyone seemed to be at the second desk so we went there.  A medical form was distributed, which we filled in, before they shined a laser on us (temperature reading?) and charged us $1 each for the privilege. 

Bags were put through a scanner and we were then left standing in the next area.  There was a place to hand in passports and get visa stamps, but none of us had our passports.  And no one from the bus staff was there…

We needn’t have worried, the men behind the counter were processing passport after passport from plastic bags full of them.  A lady finally was handed a whole batch from many buses, which she distributed. 

No one had asked to see the stamped health form.  I suspect that we could have just have walked past and avoided that ‘service’…

I normally check our visa stamps once we have them, and I was really glad I did – they’d only give the 15 day visa (which is free) as we hadn’t handed them the proof of our paid 30 day visa!  I managed to explain to our bus lady and she went back and got it changed.  I have no idea what would have happened when we tried to leave 10 days after our visa said we should.  I expect it would have been a pain though and cost us quite a bit in fines. 

We headed back to the bus, except it had gone back and we were now waiting for another bus to take us the couple of km into the town.  Most people were getting the bus to Can Tho with this minivan company, so timing was not an issue.  We needed to be in Ha Tien to catch the local bus which goes on up to Chau Doc though.  I couldn’t find timetables online, but had read some talk about it being somewhere between 1pm and 2pm.  We were approaching 1pm, so starting to get to the point of getting a taxi so we didn’t miss the last bus.

The minivan lady told me that there was a bus at 6.30pm, so our worries about missing it faded. 

After sitting in the little café for nearly an hour in the end, (she said 5 minutes when we asked early on!) a bus finally arrived to take us on, and then dropped us off at a bus station a way to the east of the town.  Here there was not a lot, a couple of cafés with no English signs, and some bus offices.  Chris tried to ask around for the bus to Chau Doc and was told that there were no more buses today!  Not what we wanted to hear! 

At this point I resorted to a contact we had in Chau Doc, a lady called Mrs San who we were going on a tour with the next day and who had offered to help if we needed it.  Luckily there was wifi here, so we were able to WhatsApp her.  She was great!  Within minutes a man turned up on a bike, took our tickets order, and returned a few minutes later with tickets for a bus at 6.30pm.  He showed us where to get the bus from and then left.  It was from our bus station, so possibly whoever Chris asked had misunderstood the question, or worked for another company with no idea of bus schedules of other companies. 

Our initial joy wore off a little when we realised we had to spend four hours at this station.  We managed to get some food from the place we were at, rice with chicken drumsticks and a noodle soup were available.  Our bus company had only an old hanger, which was empty but for couple of plastic chairs and their desk.  We decided to stick with where we were at, although a bus parked nearby seemed to have left some rather foul smelling water (transporting fish??) which ran down under our table.  Not so nice.

We headed to the bus company hanger for 5.30pm, as instructed, and hung out on the plastic chairs.  Shortly before the bus left nature called and I headed for the loo.  Uh oh, this was a squat, and I needed more than a wee.  With no option I had to just go for it, and it was fine actually.  So now it’s just Chris to achieve that lifetime first – he wussed out last time.  I believe he intends to write an article about it…

There was some confusion about our tickets on the bus.  The random man on the motorbike had told us that we were in the seats, rather than the beds as they were cheaper.  The bus didn’t have seats, so we were to sit in the aisle apparently.   Except there were two cancellations, so we had two beds between us.  Then we were shown to four beds and told we may have to move.  We never did.  People sat in the aisles but the bus lady never asked us to move.  So I have no idea if we paid less and then sat in people’s seats, or if it was all fine.  The bus was a random one, a sleeper bus with some semi beds in three rows and two levels.  You can sit them up, although your legs have to be straight out in front of you (under the person in front’s head).  They lay most the way back too, which does make for some pretty good sleeping.  A good halfway house (although Chris’s legs were too long to fit in the foot cubby hole). 

The journey itself was very smooth, and then we were dropped off at the side of the road.  Unlike normal bus arrivals there were no taxi’s waiting.  We thought we were the only people to get off, but there was a lady there so we assumed she’d gotten off the bus too and was waiting for her lift.  We started to look up walking distance – 2.5km.  A bit far at 10pm with bags…  We had no local sim yet so no way to call a taxi though.  Where could we get one?  Then the lady asked us if we needed help and said she could call a taxi.  How nice, we thought.  Except she looked a little familiar.  As she waited with us, she asked us about our plans here and we told her that we were going to the forest the next day with Ms San.  ‘I am Ms San’ she said.  What a weird introduction, but pretty funny!  She’d waited for the bus to get in and come to meet us bless her! 

She came with us to the hostel on her bike to make sure that we were there ok, reconfirmed times for the trip tomorrow and then headed off. 

Our room was pretty good with comfy beds 😊.  Bedtime for all!

Day 159: Tra Su Cajuput Forest near Chau Doc

As there was no breakfast at the hostel, we wandered out into the street to see what we could find.  Many locals seemed to be eating at places with a few things in a cabinet at the front.  The first was rather dominated by meat, including pigs knuckles.  A large sign saying ‘Chay’ which we know means Vegetarian, was across the street so we headed there – at least you don’t need to worry about dodgy meat! 

No one was eating there, which is not normally a good sign, but what we could see in the cabinet looked ok so we asked for four portions and sat down.  We were served a simple soup with sweetcorn, and a plate of short rice with some noodles, tofu, mushroom (?), and some grated carrot (?).  With some fish sauce drizzled over it was really good. 

As it’s New Year here they brought out an extra plate of local sweets, including dates, raisins, sweetened coconut and other sugary things we couldn’t name. 

Plus a plate of sweets.  We took a few to keep them happy as they seemed so pleased to give them to the kids.  We were also offered some cans of drink, one looked like cherry juice so we tried it – actually fizzy aniseed!  Not a hit with the kids and not something I would normally drink with breakfast.  I do like aniseed though.

All this had taken rather longer than we’d planned, so we raced back to the hotel and up to clean our teeth as our bus was due.  Ms San was calling me as we came down the stairs to say that the shuttle was waiting.  We hopped in the minivan and were driven down to the riverside, where she was waiting to show us onto a boat.  As we’d hoped, this was a private trip so it was just us on the boat, with Ms San and the boat driver. 

We started off across the river to the petrol station, which is a boat, and watched the local taxi driver, a teenage girl, rowing locals across from the main town to their houseboats on this far side of the river. 

Just around the corner we stopped at a fish farm.  This is a major industry here, with wooden structures the size of houses lined with nets and sunk down into the river.  This farm has 150,000 tiny fish put in, which are then fed for six months until they are big enough to sell.  The farm we visited had Tilapia and the kids got to feed them and cause a crazy fish feeding frenzy.  Always fun 😊.

A short way further up we stopped at the shore for a walk around this island village.  Here there is quite a Muslim influence, so we passed a mosque, and in the weaving shop the kids were dressed in Muslim garb.  Evie also had a go at weaving!

We passed a pancake stall on the way, where a lady was batch cooking coconut pancakes to sell elsewhere, whilst also selling to the numerous people who kept turning up to buy them.  She’d been up since 5am making them apparently.  We had a couple, one with egg and one without and found them both delicious 😊.

Mrs San showed us various plants we passed, foods being grown and generally talked about the area.  This particular island is inhabited by Malaysian Cham’s, who moved back here after troubles locally.  There are other examples of Vietnamese peoples who dispersed and have returned, living a very insular life as they do not speak Vietnamese.  They clearly didn’t have a lot of money, and Mrs San kept producing a bag of toys and treats which she let our kids hand out to local children.  What a lovely lady. 

Back in the boat, we doubled back to the main river for a short way, passing a floating market where the vendors hang one of what they sell from the roof so you can see what they have on offer.  Clever!

Soon we turned off down one of the many man-made canals which criss cross this area to deliver water to the rice fields and provide transport routes.  This took us down past stilted houses on the riverbank and people going about their daily lives on the river. 

The boat carried on through arable land and forest whilst we chatted to Mrs San.  We were surprised to learn that they do not celebrate birthdays here.  Instead, everyone turns one year older at the Lunar New Year.  It’s effectively everyone’s birthday.  Babies are born with an age of 1 (as they have already been ‘alive’ for 9 months at birth), so a baby born in December 2019 would be two years old by mid Feb 2020!  That’s really odd to us! 

She talked about the huge rate of change she was seeing here as technology started to take over, and things became more modernised.  Generally she seemed to think it was good. 

Food kept appearing from her ‘magic’ bag, so we didn’t go hungry!  Generally we just enjoyed being on the water.

The three hour journey passed quickly this way and we soon arrived at the forest.  This was not what we expected!

We pulled up at an entrance building with many birdhouses and flowers.  All very pretty.  We bought tickets here, and got in one of the forests boats to be taken to the other side of the river, where yet more flowers and birdhouses awaited us.

There were loads of local people here, it’s a common place to go during the New Year holidays seemingly.  This initial area had places to buy food and drinks, and boat docks where you board a motorboat to take you further into the forest.  These are normally filled with around 20 people, but Mrs San managed to get us one to ourselves. 

The boat sped off through a gap between the waterweeds and trees, winding its way along.  Initially I thought there would be no chance to see anything, but the boat slowed down at certain spots and when we could see anything and so we did actually see a load of herons, and also waterhens and jacanas.  Not bad! We joined the main canal again, and headed to the dock.  The whole thing lasted barely 10 minutes.  

We arrived at the second area, greeted by a man on a loudspeaker directing returning people onto the motorboats (apparently).  It was not quite the peaceful scene we’d imagined. 

We headed to the right and boarded a manpowered boat.  Ah, this will be the main nature bit, I thought.  Wrong!  Whilst this may have been good for wildlife spotting before as it’s slower and quieter, the boat channel has been dug out and left on the side, creating banks of dirt which block your view through to the floating plants and trees beyond.  There are also flowerpots everywhere to make the place look prettier, and the new bamboo bridge running alongside ruins the tranquillity rather a lot.  Looking back at the stream of boats moving around the route, I felt like we were on a ride in a theme park to be honest. 

I don’t think I hid my disappointment well from Mrs San.  But she was not done with us.  ‘Now we go to the quiet bit.  It’s better,’ she said and we perked up immediately. 

Walking a bit further down through some more shops, we crossed another canal to a quieter eating area than before.  We sat in one of the wooden huts along the river, seated on the floor around a  low table.  Mrs San ordered us some DIY spring rolls and a fried rice and we enjoyed some free tea.  After munching till we were full, she returned and pulled out a bag of fruit – mango and rambutans – yum!

There’s a tower here that you can climb, so we did that next for views over the forest.  They weren’t spectacular, but you could see the forest spreading out.

There are two bridges back, the one we’d come over and ‘Monkey Bridge’, which is basically a piece of bamboo over the canal with handrails.  We chose that one of course!  The locals who could see us from the main bridge loved it.

Stood finally in a place where there was no one else for at least 20m, Mrs San gestured down the bank to two rowing boats.  We were taking these out into the forest alone!  Much more like it.

With Chris and Aiden in one boat, and Evie, Mrs San and I in the other, we used our mix of poles and oars to follow a very narrow channel between the trees.  The water level was low, so we frequently hit things on the bottom, and forward motion was gained more by pushing off all the branches and trunks than actually paddling. 

Soon, we lost the sounds of the many people and felt like we were exploring a flooded forest deep in the jungle.  Especially when giant mosquitos descended.  We’d been warned and had put loads of DEET on, but they were persistent little s***s and bit through clothes. 

Ironically, we saw very little wildlife (a few dead egrets in the trees proving that they roost here in numbers), but we had fun anyway.  We thought we’d have to get out of the boat for a while when ours got totally stuck on something underneath.  It must have taken us most of 5 minutes to work the boat free and carry on.  I’m sure the boys were willing us to capsize in our efforts to free ourselves, but we managed to remain upright!  Why is it always my boat?

Back on land, we had the choice of taking the motor boat back or walking the 2.5km bamboo bridge.  We chose the latter for a chance to see more of the forest.  This bridge has literally just been opened in Jan 2020, and parts are still under construction.  This has brought an increased ticket price, and much more development (the birdhouses and flowers), but has also increased visitors.  As they don’t have enough boats, they have put free fruits part way down the bridge to encourage people to walk.  From what we saw, they just walk down to the fruit and turn back!  The bridge after the fruit was pretty empty!

Still, we appreciated free rambutans and satsumas. 

Our return journey down the canals in our original boat got quite chilly as the sun went down.  We saw loads of birds though, making this the more successful section of the birding trip!  We went all that way and saw more just a few km down river from the town – typical!

We needed to get some cash from an ATM, change most the dollars we had left and buy a sim card so Ms San took us on a whistlestop tour of the town to change our cash in a jewellers which was just closing (literally just shutting the metal shutters), an ATM and into a shop which sold us a sim card.  Sorted!  We were then able to pay her before turning our mind to dinner.  There were quite a few options, but we were pretty knackered and fancied watching a film (we do love a Friday Film Night!), so we bought four Vietnamese sandwiches from a street seller and got in a taxi back to the hostel where we had a blissfully warm shower (I felt like I was wearing half of the river from the spray) and settled down to a  film with a sandwich and some fruit Ms San had bought for us but we’d not eaten.  Once it was done, we wanted to put the kids to bed, but the waterpark was playing its loud karaoke again and so there was no way the kids would sleep.  We phoned family instead and went to bed together once it stopped at around 9.30pm.

Day 160: Moving on to Can Tho – a bus through the Mekong Delta

With our bus not until 10, and due to pick us up on its route out of town, we had a fairly lazy start to the day.  We returned to the same restaurant as yesterday to enjoy their breakfast food again.  Today we were brought free fruits, more sweets and the lady (who loved the children and kept hugging them and trying to talk to them in Vietnamese) brought some seeds out and showed us how to shell them with your teeth.  We love this place! 

After a chat with them via Google Translate about our travels and how much we loved their food, they handed us some face masks for our time in the capital.  Such nice people! 

The bus turned up pretty on time, only around 10 minutes late, and we had a smooth journey to Can Tho.  The bus itself was pretty luxurious, with loads of legroom and comfy leather seats 😊.  It was only a short taxi ride from the bus station to the hostel, where we were greeted by the super friendly lady on reception who speaks great English.  Our room was excellent for only £8 per night; ensuite with a balcony, massive windows and high ceilings.  The room is really spacious too 😊.

We asked about lunch options and were pointed down the street to a couple of places.  The restaurants here in Vietnam seem to do only one or two dishes, so there was a Pho restaurant which does beef noodle soup, or one next door which does something with pork and rice.  It was a bit hot for a soup, and as a family we try not to eat beef any more, so those options didn’t appeal.  We were very hungry though as it was now gone 2pm, so we headed towards an area which looked like it had more restaurants per the map.  On the way we passed ‘Don Chicken’, which was a nice modern, air conditioned restaurant which looked like it would do fast food – just what we were after really! 

None of us were in the mood for healthy eating today, feeling a little tired and fed up of menu’s we can’t understand.  Whilst the menu here was not much better as everything seemed to be for more than one person, but for how many?  We weren’t quite sure what the deal was here, and there was a hob in the middle of the table!?

At the back of the menu was the safe choice of fried chicken, chips and a salad.  That’d do!  It was not at all cheap compared to the prices we’d been paying for breakfast and sandwiches in Vietnam so far but it was very good and the kids were delighted with it. 

Feeling in the mood for a naughty afternoon, we looked up the supermarkets in the area, stocked up on chocolate, popcorn and biscuits (and toothpaste – it was a rather odd shopping basket!) and went back to watch another film and stuff our faces before catching up on some learning.

When we got back, we quickly and easily sorted out a trip to the floating markets for tomorrow – they were definitely expecting us to ask for one as it’s the main thing to do here.  The price was much better than anything we’d found online so we were very happy to book with them.  This was the reason we were staying here – the reviews online had talked about the amazing staff and how good the tour they book for you is.  Fingers crossed it delivers on more than just price… especially seeing as we’re being picked up at 4.45am in the morning!!!

Having had a late dinner and lots of snacks, none of us were very hungry for dinner, so I popped out down the road and found some more Vietnamese sandwiches.  At less than 50p each they’re pretty good value!

Time for an early night…

Day 161: The Mekong Delta; floating markets, noodles and boats

None of us enjoy an early morning, and getting up at 4.20am was not welcome!  The pick up went smoothly though, with a car outside to pick us up at just after 4.45am.  There was another couple waiting downstairs from Germany.  They seemed to be doing the same tour as us and we wondered whether we’d be sharing boats.  Our guides for the day were there to meet us as well.

We weren’t sharing.  The Germans were boarding a little sampan boat as we arrived at the dock, which was basically a few planks running down into the river with many boats moored against it.  There was some shouting, and a bit of confusion when we arrived and then we were ushered into one of the many boats.  This trip to the floating markets is THE thing to do around here, and as we headed down the river in the dark there were many boats doing the same, small sampans like ours and larger tour boats.   But for some reason ours seemed to be going slower than everyone elses!  Our guide talked about us swapping for a bigger boat, which was good as we were out for hours and this one had no sun cover (which we’d specifically asked for).  After 15 minutes or so on the boat, we pulled up to the bank alongside the German couple.  Perhaps they were on the same boat as us?  Nope, we just swapped boats with them as there was marginally longer and had three rows of seats instead of two.  It wasn’t faster either, and both boats trundled down the river.  We needn’t have worried about speed really, we arrived at the market before sunrise still and didn’t miss anything (other than a few more minutes in bed!). 

The floating market is an iconic thing in the Mekong (and other river areas), but makes a lot of sense in a place where there is a lot of water, few roads and where all goods are transported by boat.  The wholesalers come to a certain place in the river, advertise what they have on board by displaying a couple on a tall stick, and then the local market sellers come to these groups of boats and buy large amounts of whatever stock they need.  We saw little sampans weighed down with bags of onions, pumpkins and watermelons. 

Whilst there are a lot of tourist boats here (more than the selling boats!), but it actually added to the buzz of the market and we didn’t really mind for once.  The smaller sampans like ours were more able to wind in and out of the larger sales boats, whereas the bigger tour boats had to stick to the main channel.  They also had to moor up at floating restaurants for breakfast, whilst we got to moor up against a noodle sampan and eat right in our little boat!

This will go down as a travel highlight for me, sitting on our own little boat, with the backrest turned into a table for us (just like a Sylvanian Families toy), rafted up with other people, with the boat rocking back and forth whilst we tried to eat a bowl of noodle soup with chopsticks without spilling it everywhere.  Oh, and with the sun rising in the background and the hum of the market around.  It’s definitely the strangest place I’ve had breakfast!!

Once we’d eaten, we carried on down the river, whilst many of the boats were turning back.  We had another few hours to go.  First up was the Noodle making shop, which involves you watching, and at times joining in with, the rice noodle making process.  They show you how they mix it up with rice flour and cassava flour, and then spread it out over a warm plate to steam off a lot of the moisture.  After it’s carried to a drying rack.  Once dried for three hours, they put it through the machine to cut it into ribbons.  Voila. 

It was a quick stop only, and we re-boarded our sampan.  These are pretty small boats, with a longtail motor and two oars attached to the back for slow manoeuvring. The boat driver has to be standing to row.  As we headed back down the river, a muppet driver tried to overtake us into oncoming traffic, cut it too close and caught his oar on the front of our boat, totally ripping it off!  Luckily for him, after shouting at him a bit, our driver rescued his oar (he was rather stranded without it), and we took it over to him.  The wooden post for the oar was shattered.  We left him trying to figure out how to piece it all back together and hoping that the poor couple in his boat would get their tour completed without too much delay. 

Our tour was meant to take us to a second floating market, but our guide informed us that with it being Lunar New Year, it was likely that there would be very few boats, so she suggested that we have a longer tour around the canals instead.  We were happy with that, the first market had satisfied our desire to see one. 

The canals route was excellent, there were very few other boats on this route, and the narrow natural waterways wound round through hamlets and jungles.  Very peaceful.

We nearly got stranded on a tree at one point.  A tree had fallen down across the stream, it was clearly passable at times as the driver headed for one end of it with some speed, The trunk was below the water, but not far enough it seemed as we couldn’t get over, and the oars couldn’t get us back off it!  In the end, Chris had to climb up front and help push the boat off against the boughs.  We went another way. 

We moored up after an hour or so, and got out for our section walking the riverbank to a café and orchard.  The walk was pleasant enough, past people’s houses, with our guide showing us fruits that were literally growing along the riverbank.  The café is linked to a homestay, and has an orchard we walked around to see how some of the local fruits grow.  Our guide was clear before we went in that there’s no need to buy anything we didn’t want to, or to buy lunch for the driver (which is supposedly expected in some cases), which was nice of her.  We were actually getting pretty peckish by this point though, so bought some fruit shakes and some Vietnamese pancakes (which we didn’t really love).  It was not cheap, but there’s not much competition here!  The riverside spot in little huts was nice though.

The boat had come ahead to meet us here, and had a sun shelter up.  Nice!  We continued the loop through the waterways back to Can Tho, for a taxi back to our hostel.  We were hungry again by this point, so we stopped in at the Pho Tai place the hostel had recommended for some beef noodle soup, which was ok, but nothing to get excited about. 

Our early morning meant we were all tired come the evening, so we sent Chris out to the ‘take out stalls’ and enjoyed some tiny pizzas.  They were pretty good, seemingly with Dairylea on as part of the cheese?  May have to try that at home…

Onwards to Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang with our parents for some city exploration and then beach time!  Or follow us back to Cambodia, and the beautiful island of Koh Rong Sanloem if you missed it.