Mekong Delta and Mekong friends

Early starts... Ugh. Sorry about the title too.

Sums up how we felt on the journey!

The bus picked us us from the hostel at 8, and took us to the harbour. The tour guide was entertaining, which was a bonus, but I think his sparkle was a little wasted on the 8am crowd. The boat was large and comfortable enough, and we chugged our way around, seeing this and that. At one point we got off the main boat and had canoe rides in groups of four through the narrower parts. As you can see in the photos, we were wearing stereotypical Vietnamese hats at this stage.

Au bateau

Tour guide

Remarkably strong little woman

Coconut candy production line- it didn't taste as good as it looked in my opinion

After that, we stopped and had some local delicacies, including a very tasty drink containing lime juice, honey, hot water and bee pollen granules. We also had royal jelly and some little snacks which I unfortunately don't remember the name of now. I bought a packet of one, but somehow lost it on the way home. While we enjoyed these, we got to know the two people we shared the canoe with, a very friendly French couple. Names escape me, but I had a good time trying to dazzle with my French speaking. At the very least, Andy said he was impressed.

Next was lunch, pork and rice provided for free - no complaints on price, but some sauce would've helped. I then borrowed a truly knackered-looking, rusty bicycle and took a look around the village we were in, with Andy trotting along behind me like an exasperated parent. We could only take a brief look around as we needed to be back in time to catch the boat to the next place, where we had lots of exotic fruits, such as dragonfruit, papaya and watermelon, while listening to some traditional Vietnamese music. This signalled the end of the trip for Andy and I, but not for the French couple and several more people, as they had booked a hotel as part of the trip and were staying one or two more days.

Local school

Andy pretending to ride the bike

I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts, diddly-dee...

Shovin' buddies!

French friends

Pineapple, plantaine, dragonfruit, mango, papaya

In the evening, we went out for dinner after showering and came across a cool place. It was called the Happy Cow, or something like that. Definitely cow-related. Moooo (that's for my niece Mia). While we waited for our food, an Australian guy named James (Jimmy) around our age asked to join us. Naturally we told him to jog on. Kidding! He came and perched next to us, and we all got along really well. His story was similar to ours, he has just finished uni and is celebrating by travelling through Southeast Asia. However he was on his own because he finished his thesis before his friends and flown straight out, and he was staying in a five-star hotel. Anyway, once we had eaten he joined us for some shisha down the road.

Funny menu

We are like Merry and Pippin on the longbottom leaf out here.

Us with Jimmy

While we were sitting outside the bar, watching the world go by, we made friends with the two people at the next table, a guy around 50 and a girl around 20. Again no names, but I remember the guy was a photographer and was staying at the hostel that the girl runs with her brother. That was what they told us at least. They played a little pool with us, and we had flaming Cointreaus to try and kick-start the night a little before Jimmy put a firm hand on the rudder and took the five of us to a place he had researched online which was supposed to have good house music.

Unfortunately it was a bit quieter than expected at the bar, but we found a nice little spot with cushions on the floor where we could sit together, and it was very relaxing. Sitting close to the floor seems fairly normal in Vietnam, we ate breakfast while sitting on cushions on the floor and a lot of the chairs seem very low. After a while at the bar, photographer guy and hostel girl left us as hostel girl wanted to do some dancing. Shortly after that, a French guy asked to sit with us, so we said yes, but as soon as he started rolling a spliff, we downed our drinks and bolted. You can get in really serious trouble for that out here. Andy and I were pretty tired by this point, so we said farewell to Jimmy, arranged to see him the next night, and went to bed.