31/12/2006 Phu Quoc / Ho Chi Mihn / Can Tho
Woke up this morning and went for an early ocean swim. Nothing like it at 6 in the morning. I was suprised by the amount of old euro women on the beach doing Tai Chi and a few doing Yoga.
Anyways, we found out that our boat had once again been canceled. After deciding that we cannot spend another day here we decided that heading to the airport and trying to catch a flight would be the best action. So off we went. Luckily we made it to the airport at about 08:10 and there were 5 seats open on the 08:30 to HCMC. $45 dollars and 15 minutes later I was sitting on a seat of a turbo prop taxiing for take off.
Back in HCMC, we took a taxi to the local bus terminal and managed to get four tickets on a limosine bus to Can Tho. 1 ticket runs about $4USD. I forget the name of the company, but it was definately the best. Their buses are air conditioned and no smoking. Anways, around 11:00 we were on the road. The buses weren’t made with tall people in mind. Luckily I was able to manage an aisle seat and could strecht my legs out.
About 4 hours later we were crossing the Mekong getting ready to find out hotel in Can Tho. Can Tho is one of the larger (if not the largest) city in the MeKong. We found a hotel in the old downtown area and booked our rooms. The hotel is above a restaurant called Restaurant 31, hence the hotel is named Hotel 31. The rooms were really large, yet really cheap. Again about $7 a person. There were 4 large aquariums in the lobby, 1 containing snakes, 1 containing fish, 1 containing frogs and the final containing crabs and turtles. It turns out these are the main cuisine of the restaurant, nothing like fresh meat!
After we settled in, we decided dinner was the mission at hand. But first we had a detour. While venturing through the urbanized riverfront, we came across a Thai massage parlour. Now, if you have never had a Thai massage, you’re missing out! Bad thing is, outside of SE Asia they are expensive. In Thailand you can get a 1 hour massage for maybe $5. Anyways, after a 4 hour cramped bus ride, an hour massage for $4 sounded good.
The massage itself was good. The service was a little bit more then expected. After about twenty minutes, the young lady started getting very friendly with the family if you catch my drift. Finally she made a series of guestures: first pointing at my crotch, then her mouth, and then the ‘OK’ sign. At first, I was so confused I just looked at her like “Wat wat wat???” and then I realized that this was a bit more then a massage parlour. After nicely refusing the sex and asking for more massage, I left her a $5 tip and left my room to find the rest of the group sitting on the couch. We looked at each other and just started laughing. I wondered how many of them took them up on the offer… more so how much it cost.
After that we were ready for dinner. We ate a place the lonely planet book recommended, Mekong, which happened to be about 50 meters from the Thai massage parlour.
We had a great dinner; boiled snake, grouper, lemon grass chicken and garlic frog. This along with spring rolls and a lot of beer. After this we stumbled back to the hotel and passed out maybe about 10.
Happy New Years.
01/01/2007 - Can Tho and the MeKong
We arranged for a tour of the Mekong starting from 6 in the morning. There are some really famous floating markets about 2 hours from Can Tho. Our tour included going to these and then taking us through some of the small canals to visit some fruit farms and see the local’s in their native environments.
The markets were interesting. A lot of boats filled to the brim with every type of Asian fruit you could imagine; Daria, Jackfruit, papaya, coconut, pineapple, cherry apples, tamarinds, mango, apples, bananas, starfruit, pamelo and the list could go on. Not too mention they were extremely cheap! $1 for a huge pamelo.
After going through the two markets, we set off through some of the small canals. This was interesting for a while but our boat was rented for 7 hours. Way too long for exploring the Mekong. I think the normal 4 hour tour would suffice. We had lunch at a fruit farm where they slaughtered a chicken for us and we had a delicous lemon grass chicken and rice porridge. When we finished lunch, they took us back to our hotel.
Dinner was about the same, fabulous food and a lot of beer!
After dinner, my sensei and his friend turned in for the night. Ito and I walked around Can Tho, exploring the city and discussing what had happened so far. The city was bustling with activity, New Year’s celebrations seemed to still be going on in full stride. Carnivals and street fairs were all over the area. It seemed that HCM was probably the same way. This left me with the idea that most of the provincal capitals were this way, drawing in people from all over the province to celebrate and revel in the chaos.
02/01/2007 - Can Tho -> Trah Lin
Today we headed to the Bus center and purchased our tickets to go to Trah Lin. This was fun because no-one spoke english. I had to find the city on the map, point and make the hand gestures for four tickets. After a while we finally were ushered onto a bus with the hopes that we ended up in the correct city. Luckily we did.
After sitting on the bus for and hour, the bus finally left. It took about 3 hours to get to our destination, deep deep deep in the MeKong Delta. The rice fields in Vietnam are pretty amazing. In Japan most are really small, maybe 50 yards by 30 yards. In Vietname they are much larger. Some were at least two to three football fields in length and close to that in width. In addition the rice was coming of age, meaning a deep emerald color. One of the most spectacular things I have seen, miles upon miles of it. Very serene and calming.
Trah Lin has the largest population of Khmer refugees in Vietnam. Something like 90% of the population are Khmer. So the area sports some really beautiful buddhist temples and shrines. Pictures to come soon.
The town it self is nothing special. Small and quaint without many foreign visitors. We found only one restaurant that had a english menu, so the rest of the time we spent trying to decode the vietnamese with our basic phrase books. In the center of town there was a really nice market and an Uncle Ho memorial. We chartered two motorcycles with carts to haul us around. We wanted to see some of the temples in the area, two of the most famous were about 7km outside of town. So we enjoyed a nice bumpy ride to them.
Both of the temples were relatively new, maybe 20 years old and both had monks residing there. After exploring the grounds and praying for a bit we mingled with the monks and head back to the city for some food.
Find food was the adventure for the day. Of the three restaurants we had listed in our books, 1 was closed and the others were shutdown. So we walked from food stall to food stall trying to find a place that had cold beer and something to eat. We finally found a place and had pho. All they had was pork and fish pho, but it was delicious. A group of locals was eating there also, and they were completely drunk by the time we finished eating. Two were singing and the others were passed out. Locals…
The only foreigners I saw in this area was a group of Vietnamese Austrailians and a single white guy with them. So again, very few foreigners make it this far south. I think you can skip this area and be OK.
The plan for tomorrow is to get up early and catch an 08:00 bus back to Ho Chi Mihn.
More to come.