Glenn awoke this morning feeling much better, which was good as we had to be up for 0700 breakfast. After introducing himself to the Australians we tucked into breakfast in readiness for our early morning tour of the floating market. By the time breakfast was over were moored up and ready to transfer passengers and bags to a smaller boat more suited to the congested waters of the market.
Can Tho is the major city of the Mekong with over a million inhabitants and looked to be quite prosperous with a lot of building work taking place. In contrast the side channel of the main river where the market takes place is developing country craziness at its best. Our guide explained that it is a wholesale market and boats with similar cargo moor up close to each other so we passed the pineapple area, then the sweet potato, water melon, turnip etc. Each filled with boats bobbing around on the water crammed full of produce while would be buyers come along side to strike a bargain. The craziest of all were the fish sellers whose boats have mesh sides and are partly submerged to allow them to keep the fish alive inside. Although it is a working market there were probably as many tourist boats drifting around and small ‘convenience store’ boats selling them fizzy drinks and snacks.
With our lap of the market behind us we dropped the Australians off and then went down a tiny channel, squeezing past a sand barge that had holed itself and was listing badly with the crew desperately trying to rescue it, to a local fruit farm. Our guide took us around the plantation and showed us mangos, jackfruit, papaya, pineapple, star fruit, star apples, red pears and many others whose names we can’t recall, however, we did get to see a dragon fruit on a tree, or more like a prickly vine. This fruit has a bright pink skin and we’ve become rather fond of it of breakfast.
Reboarding our boat it was back past the now sunken sand barge, the crew having lost their fight, and to a small jetty in the town where we said farewell to our guide and boarded our car for the trip back to Saigon. Four hour later we were walking down the dodgy alley to the Cat Huy hotel, deja vu like.
With Glenn’s appetite back in full swing and neither of us wanting to eat Vietnamese food tonight we went to a Burger King store we noticed from the car. Although the meal ended up costing twice as much as the lovely meal we’d had Tuesday night, unusual for junk food, it was just what we wanted - although we were a little concerned where the water for the coca cola machine came from, best not to think to hard sometimes.
Feeling great and full of greasy, western rubbish we took a short stroll around the park to watch the ladies aerobics classes, the guys playing a kind of foot volleyball with a weird shuttlecock affair and old ladies playing badminton in their day clothes and flip flops. Keep fit kicks off once the heat of the sun goes down in Cambodia too.
We rounded the evening off planning our next few days in Saigon and booking a flight to our next onward destination in Vietnam.
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| The crazy floating market |
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| Anyone need some sweet potatoes? |
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| The crew losing their battle to save the sinking barge |
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| So dragon fruit do grow on trees! |
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| She has the hat, now she crosses the bridges |
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