Mekong Delta - Saigon to Phnom Penh - 5 to 7 Feb.

We came back to Saigon for one night in readiness for an early start on our trip across the Mekong Delta. A different hotel in a different part of the city centre that showed us a far more attractive face than the area we had been in before. We were really pleased to enjoy our day there and see it at its best.

Flower displays for Tet - the lunar New Year

More Tet flowers on Nguyen Hue

A street performance - traditional instruments and music.

A 7.30am start the next day saw us underway to see the Mekong. We had booked a three day / two night trip to get to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. Overall this was something of a curate's egg experience, with some wonderful scenery and sights along the river, detracted from by a poorly run tour and some overly packaged experiences of village life; perhaps due to the large number of tourists here.  We had an early start at Can Tho and went out to the floating fruit and vegetable market. The Mekong is the most convenient transport route between the agricultural areas and the main towns. Farmers with their own boats and wholesaler,s who have been round smaller farms, bring their boats to the market where other distributors and retailers come to buy the produce. Generally each selling boat has one product advertised by hanging one or two from a tall pole above the boat.

Fishing boats at Can Tho

A sale underway

Whoever said that pineapples are an exotic fruit?

By canoe through some of the
 narrower waterways

Returning to Can Tho after the market we had a couple of hours to get lunch and went to a place we had seen the previous day.  The menu was all in Vietnamese, with only a few words of English. We chose some pork spare ribs and some sort of beef dish. After a while a large collection of plates arrived including a skillet and a dish of raw beef slices. A charcoal brazier was placed in a hole in the centre of the table and we concluded that it was 'cook your own meat', then roll it up with the other bits supplied in rice paper. It was a great meal for about £3 with beers and water included.

A filling station

Cooking our lunch at the Sil My restaurant, Can Tho

Later that day we continued through the Mekong to Cho Doc. That night we had our worst accommodation of the trip so far. The following day we were onto a different and much faster boat and we continued along the waterways to the border and onwards to Cambodia. A lovely journey along the river which was now getting wider and wider.

Our first view of Phnom Penh from the Mekong