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| Sailing up the Mekong to Vinh Loc |
Phi brought us to the harbour where we said goodbye to him
and climbed into our little boat which would take us as far as Vinh Loc. After that we would be transported to our
hotel in Can Tho by motorbike.
Our boat driver spoke only a very little English but seemed
quite happy perched on the back, squatting on his haunches Vietnamese-style,
steering us through the Mekong, chatting away on his mobile phone.
Most of the surroundings we passed through were rural and we
watched everyday people going about their business on the river. There were lots of different types of birds
flying about but their identity remains a mystery to me. We simply enjoyed cruising along at a steady
pace, with a lovely breeze to cool us down in the 35 degree heat.
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| Life on the river |
We passed by floating villages, countless floating petrol
stations, people on the riverbank fishing or sorting out their fishing nets,
kids swimming about in the water, while we just sat back and enjoyed the relaxing
boat ride.
Until, that is, our boat driver decided to take a short
cut. We started heading down a narrow
channel where we started to see more kingfishers and mud skippers which was
lovely. But then it became apparent that
as we were clearly towards the end of the dry season and river levels were
quite low, that our boat was going to have difficulty navigating through this
short cut. At one point our driver got
out of the boat, into the river and pushed!
We had to slow right down, which didn’t matter to us as we
had all the time in the world, but we were a little concerned about the
boat. At one point we saw a boat ahead
of us that seemed to be drifting, apparently without anyone on board.
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| Apparently unmanned boat on a collision course with a box of strawberries |
We watched as it glided slowly downstream ahead
of us, until with a huge crash it crashed into another boat moored at the side
of the river. The bow of the drifting boat sliced into some polystyrene box
(containing strawberries) which were piled high on the moored boat and the
owner of the strawberries jumped up and out of his hammock (it was that time of
day) and came out yelling. It was then
we saw someone leap up from the drifting boat (he was obviously having a kip in
his hammock as well, it being that time of day), he quickly grabbed a pole, managed
to disentangle his boat from the moored boat, and slowly and carefully steered
off down the river.
After that bit of excitement, our boat got stuck a couple of
times, and we wondered whether the short cut had been that sensible, but our skipper
seemed quite unfazed by all the little problems and, in fact, soon enough we
were in deeper water, he climbed back in, dried off, cranked up the engine and
off we went. A little further downstream we joined a major
tributary of the river again and shortly after that arrived at Vinh Loc. We had spent 5 hours on the boat and the time
had just flown by.
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| Rowing upstream in a more suitable boat |
At the harbour we were met by Phi’s friends and their motorbikes
who loaded our rucksacks onto their motorcycles between them and the
handlebars, and with us on the back we headed off to Can Tho.
It was only a 40 minute journey and it was uneventful except
the fact that my arse goes a bit numb after a while. The trip itself was like any other trip on a
motorcycle in Vietnam, avoiding collisions with other vehicles by a hair’s breadth,
allowing for vehicles travelling up the wrong way, getting out of the way of
speeding cars, buses and trucks before they mow you down, and then finding
yourself on the back of a motorbike going round a roundabout the wrong way and heading
up a road in the wrong direction before eventually turning left.
After a relaxing boat trip, the motorcycle journey had the
reverse effect but, as usual, because of the skill of all of the drivers and
riders on the road, we arrived in one piece at our hotel where we would be
spending Tet.
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| More Mekong scenery |
We would also be spending time relaxing trying to recover a
bit from the bronchitis. And it was a
lovely place to do it.
The hotel was a larger resort than we are used to but it was
cheap, and it was set in beautiful grounds with streams and ponds all over the
place. It even had a zoo although this
was really a collection of birds and a rather large snake.
We had a bungalow with a huge room and bathroom with some
outside seating. A stream trickled past
our table and chairs although unfortunately for us, the kid’s play area was
right opposite. This meant it was noisy
early in the morning and late afternoon but we always had a break between 11am
and about 3pm when all the Vietnamese went off for a nap.
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| The hotel gardens |
There were a few westerners staying at the hotel and lots of
Vietnamese on holiday with their families for Tet. The restaurant was shut for a couple of days
so most staff had a chance to spend some time with their families. Tet is the only annual Vietnamese holiday and
for a few days, almost everywhere is shut.
I spent most of my time sleeping (again) and reading and just
generally being lazy, still trying to shake off my chest infection – sometimes
you just have to do nothing and the rest did me the world of good.
Paul however, became slightly bored, so one day he went off
for a wander into town on his own. It
was quite a long walk and another hot day. He returned a few hours later,
looking a bit frazzled with a bit of a mad gleam in his eye. It turned out he had got a bit lost and then been
detained by a bunch of Vietnamese fisherman on the riverbank who insisted that
he join them for rice wine and nibbles.
Never one to refuse the hospitality of a local he sat down with the
group that, in the blink of an eye, expanded from two or three men to about a
dozen.
He was presented with a variety of tasty morsels and those
that he recognised were eggs, worm and fish.
Rice wine flowed freely from a clear glass (unmarked) bottle.
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| Exotic flowers in the garden |
First the eggs. He
was handed a brown egg. He knew it was
an egg because it was shaped like an egg but he had no idea what he was
supposed to do with it. It was a dark
brown colour so he initially thought it was still in its shell and wasn’t sure whether,
if it was, he was supposed to eat the shell too. As he
gazed at his egg clearly a bit perplexed, one of the fishermen helped him out
in his predicament and kindly chopped it up for him.
It is likely it was a salted egg which is either preserved
in brine or packed in damp salted charcoal for a prescribed amount of
time. I asked him what it was like and whether
the yolk was runny and he told me to think of the consistency of a Cadbury’s
Creme Egg. This was not an appealing thought.
They also love salted eggs in
China as well, along with a variation on the theme called thousand year old eggs. However, they sound disgusting and a prime
candidate for salmonella if you ask me and I applaud Paul for sampling these
delights without throwing up.
The next delicacy on offer was worms. He originally thought they were pickled but more likely they were salted (there’s a theme
developing here). Fair play to him, he
helped himself and ate a few worms segments.
By the time he returned to the hotel and I quizzed him about his culinary experience, he wasn’t sure whether worms should actually be labelled
a foodstuff and his stomach was beginning to protest.
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| Our little bungalow |
Fish was served dried and (you guessed it) salted. At least you're pretty sure you're getting fish when you are faced with the whole creature: head (complete with eyes), fins and tail. Come to think of it, they are usually so small, it's unlikely they're gutted as well. No doubting it's a fish then. Whether or not it's going to make you sick is a risk you have to take.
There were other delicacies provided but they were
unrecognisable. Bread was also served
along with lashings of rice wine, which accounted for the rather crazed look in
his eyes when he got back. This is what
happens when he ventures out on his own, and it usually involves alcohol!
Tet was celebrated while we were in Can Tho, and the hotel
provided us with some traditional food which included soup (meals always
includes soup in Vietnam) and some sweet and savoury rice cakes, and lots of
green tea. Fireworks in town followed at
midnight and the next day the Vietnamese families began turning up to celebrate
their annual holiday.
Otherwise, we spent most of the time here relaxing in the
beautiful gardens, watching the geckos fighting on the wall outside our room, whiling
away the time and recharging our batteries, until it was time to take a bus to
Chau Doc, our last stop in Vietnam before we headed over the border to
Cambodia.
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