Wednesday 26th October 2022
Today we got picked up by taxi at 5am, as we’d booked a tour to the floating markets. We were originally meant to be picked up from the end of the road, but the flood waters were already high and the road was underwater, so we would have had very wet feet!
The taxi driver kept stopping every time he drove through a flooded area, I’m not sure exactly what he was doing, maybe just checking the car had survived!
We reached the pier, boarded the boat, and set off down the river in the early morning twilight.
It wasn’t long before the river started getting busier. Ngoc, our tour guide, explained that you can tell what each boat is selling by their mast. We looked up, and all the masts were skewering various different fruits and vegetables! We had reached the famous Cai Rang floating market.
A boat soon pulled up alongside us, laden with various types of drinks. I’m not a big coffee drinker, big you can’t go to Vietnam without trying the traditional Cà Phê Sữa Đá (iced coffee, made with condensed milk). It was nice, very sweet though.
Next up was the pineapple boat, a floating pineapple wholesalers. We got to board the boat, and watch as the woman prepared a couple of pineapples for us to take with us for our breakfast.
Before the pineapple, we first had to have the savoury course. Luckily there’s another boat preparing exactly that – pork rice noodle soup to be precise. Apparently the one that Ngoc took us to us the best on the Mekong Delta. Which I can easily understand as there was a bit of a queue to be served. As we were waiting, boats kept squeezing through, basically forcing their way in between boats where previously there was no gap. At times it caused a lot of rocking from side to side!
After breakfast we went to the land market onshore. I could see the Israeli girl on our trip looking less and less impressed as Ngoc explained we may see a lot of blood. And skinned rats. And skinned frogs that jump – although they are dead, apparently it’s the nerves or something that twitch immediately after death. It’s a good thing though – it proves the produce is fresh!
The warning was well timed, as the first thing we saw upon disembarking the boat, was a big dish of skinned rats (I’m not sure I’d have recognised them, but Ngoc helpfully pointed them out). There was also a huge variety of fresh fruit and veg, and as we walked around (skilfully avoiding all the motorcycles that somehow squeezed their way through the narrow market streets!), Ngoc purchased a wide variety of interesting looking fruit.
Back to the boat, and another peaceful journey back through the market and on to a rice noodle factory. It was very similar to the process for making spring roll wrappers, that we’d previously seen in Cambodia, but on a much bigger scale.
We then continued further down the river, and then along a much smaller canal. It was very serene and beautiful, with no other boats in sight. At this point, Ngoc produced the fruit that she’d purchased at the market and we got to taste it – I can’t remember what they were all called, but think the purple fleshed dragonfruit was my favourite! Ngoc also explained to us how to tell the difference between the purple and white fleshed fruit. Ngoc also explained to us how to tell the difference (they both look very similar from the outside) – the purple dragonfruit has ears on the outside that are tightly curled.
We rounded a bend, and there a huge floating digger blocking our way! I assume it was dredging the canal. Luckily, our skilled boat driver deftly navigated around it.
Further down the canal we stopped for our next destination – an organic cacao farm. As we walked around the farm, Ngoc explained to us the process. We also got to taste some of the fruit from the cacoa bean. I was surprised at the taste, slightly sour and not at all chocolatey. I was also surprised to hear that cocoa cider was made as a byproduct, prior to the cocoa beans being dried out in the sun. We got to taste some of this cider (it wasn’t at all chocolatey tasting!), along with an iced cocoa drink at the end of the tour.
We walked back to our boat, sailed along the river, then met our taxi to go back to the hotel. I had a quick look at things to see and do in Can Tho and the Binh Thuy ancient house seemed to feature quite highly. So we ordered a grab car to take us there.
I’m not quite sure why it’s high up, as honestly I didn’t think it was worth the journey. It’s a beautiful house, and it was interesting to go inside, but there’s not all that much to it, and no audio guide or text descriptions to give any kind of context. There was quite a cool fountain shaped like a mountain with cute miniature houses outside though!
Next door was a little art gallery, free to enter, which I actually enjoyed more that the ancient house. If we’d had enough luggage space (we’re going to do several budget airline flights on this trip with 7kg limit), we’d probably have bought something to take back as a souvenir.
When we returned to the street outside, the flood waters has risen considerably. In fact, we were now pretty much stranded (unless we wanted to get wet feet, which we didn’t!) So we used our trusty Grab app to order a taxi. Or at least try to order one. Every time we attempted it said no cars available, not sure if that was because everyone was now ordering them or if the cars were deliberately avoiding the area. We were just about to give up, and had resigned ourselves to retreating back to the ancient house and camping out on the steps for a couple of hours, when a car finally accepted. Needless to say, he got a good tip!
We went back to the Ninh Kieu Sky Bar that we’d been to on our first night, to have a couple of beers and watch the sunset.
We were hoping the flood waters would soon recede, so we could walk to Cửa Hàng Ăn Uống Thanh Xuân (the restaurant where we were meeting K and Alice for dinner). By 7.30pm, the roads were still looking pretty flooded so we decided to get another beer and then order a Grab. After a couple of false starts (the first two drivers were the other side of the flooded roads and wanted us to walk through the floods to get to them!) we walked in the general direction of the restaurant and found a regular taxi to take us. The taxi driver looked about 12 years old, and seemed very nervous of us, but he got us there in one piece and without us having to get wet feet!
Cửa Hàng Ăn Uống Thanh Xuân is a bbq restaurant, so the meat comes in various marinades, but raw, and you cook it yourself on a charcoal grill. Very fun! We ordered beef, squid, and goat. The goat was definitely my favourite – very succulent and tender, unlike the beef which was a little tough. The beer wasn’t chilled, but came with giant ice cubes. This seems to be quite common in Vietnam – if you don’t want to drink warm beer, you have to drink it with ice! I preferred the giant cubes though, as at least it dilutes the beer less than the small ones.
After dinner, we got another Grab car to a karaoke bar. The karaoke places here are very cool and hi-tech. Each room has its own toilet, and also a big basket filled with snacks (which obviously you pay for if you eat). We ordered beer, and they bought in a huge crate of it, along with a big bucket filled with ice. Again, you just pay for what you consume. It ended up being super cheap – around £20 between the four of us, for a few hours karaoke, including some snacks and several beers. It was also such good fun! Hopefully we won’t regret it tomorrow morning – although we do have a long bus ride to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), so can always do the Vietnamese thing of having a daytime nap if we need to!
Emma and Pete’s Asian Adventure 