We
were up and out early for a 7:30am start. To me it still felt like
we had had a lie in because Vietnam national radio was blasted out
onto the streets from 5:00am. It seems to be used as a sort of
national alarm clock and it worked very well. We were back on the
bus for a short drive down to yet another boat. Yesterday our guide
Trung had sat it was a small boat and we would have to sit two to a
bench. I’m not great with small boats and I have been apprehensive
for the last twenty four hours. It was bigger than I expected but as
you walked up and down the narrow wooden plank to get on and off it
wobbled quite a bit. I was sure I was going to fall in but I didn’t.
We cruised around the Cai Rang floating market, similar to
yesterday’s but on a much larger scale and still teeming with life.
IT was very bust with big boats all heavily laden with their wares
and again with poles on top hanging out samples of what they are
selling. It was mainly fruit and vegetables – pineapples, pears,
cabbage, turnips, carrots. People live and work on the boats so
whole families were there from little kids up to granny. Washing was
hanging out to dry and flowers and trees from Tet were still in
evidence.
It looks like a colourful life but I reckon it must be a hard
existence. The people here look like they have little spare cash and
they are living in what from the outside seem to be pretty foul
conditions. As soon as we reached the market the “corner shop”
arrived, a small boat run by an enterprising couple selling drinks.
In another a lady was cooking bowls of noodle soup although she and
her husband seemed to be the only people eating it so I’m not sure
if it was for sale.
We cruised around the market for about an hour and then headed
on down the river. We stopped at a small factory making rice
vermicelli. Good quality rice is used but because it is cheaper they
use grains that have been broken rather than whole grains. The rice
is ground up with tapioca and mixed with water to form a paste. The
paste is spread out onto large round bits of material stretched over
a hot fire to make large pancakes. A lid is put over the top to
steam the rice for a minute or so and the resultant rice paper is
then lifted onto a bamboo rack to dry in the sun. From 4:00am to
about 9:00am the sheets of rice paper are made. By noon they are
then dry and are put through a machine which shreds them into
noodles. The noodles are bagged up and taken to market to be sold.
It’s a long day for the family working here and it’s also very hot
with the fires raging.
As we left another group were coming in. There were four
German mean and what we reckon were their girlfriends. The men were
all dressed up in costumes similar to those of Morris Dancers in the
UK. Some German people in our group explained that they are
Zimmermänner auf der Walz (Carpenters on the Walk), from a
craftsmen’s guild in Germany who focus on building roofs. As part of
their apprenticeship they must travel the world for a couple of
years and are not allowed to come within a specified distance from
their home town during that time. The idea is that they get to see
different styles and influences that they can then incorporate into
their work. They certainly did not like having their photo taken and
Stef got a very gruff answer when he asked them where they were
from.
Our next stop was a house on the river bank where they have a
fruit orchard. There was not much fruit growing when we were there
but they had milk apples, bananas and pineapples. Basically we had a
walk around the garden behind the house and then had the opportunity
to sit and relax in the garden waiting for the next move on while
enjoying free samples of tropical fruits (bananas and pineapples).
In practice it was a bit of a contrived stop with everyone sitting
around for forty five minutes getting bored! Stef went off to have a
morning snooze in one of the hammocks (it was only 10:00am!).
The villages along the river reminded me of those we had seen
in Kerala in India. Water dominates people’s lives here being their
main source of transport and a key source of their livelihood. The
shifting water levels throughout they year also greatly shape their
lives. Local people were walking up and down the riverbank just at
the water’s edge scooping up large shrimps into a basket.
Comfy hammock
Drying rice "pancakes", to make noodles
From the village we made it back out onto the main river and
to our next stop, a rice husking mill. Big old machines were
whirring away to grind the rice husk from the grain. The grains
start their life brown and are then polished to create the white
rice. Husks and other debris from the process seem to be used as pig
fodder. The rice was bagged up into huge sacks and small wiry men
heaved them onto their shoulders, took them to the scales to check
their weight before lugging them out to boats on the river.
From here we were taken back to Can Tho for lunch. It was a
typical place laid on for foreign tourists with no locals in sight
other than the staff. We shared a table with a couple from Newcastle
who must have been in their fifties. He had a boozers face and was
suffering slightly from one too many brandies last night. She was a
home economics teacher picking up lots of new ideas for lessons back
home. We were soon back on the bus and across the river again on the
ferry. At Vinh Long our group split up and we changed onto a
different bus to continue the journey on to Cambodia.
The next bus was also pretty full. Here our guide was called
Qui who was not very good and no where near as professional as Trung.
His English was also difficult to understand. We had about an hour’s
drive over rough and bumpy road (a new one is in the process of
being constructed) before we reached yet another ferry. The road on
the other side of the river was better and we completed our journey
to Chao Doc faster than expected.
We did the same divide and conquer routine at the hotel which
again ensured we had a room with a window. This hotel was a little
more basic that yesterday’s but still clean and tidy. The frame of
our bed was totally knackered and we had little confidence that it
would be fixed while we went out to eat but it was. Despite the
windows not shutting properly we came back to a mosquito free room
(amazing as the streets were swarming with clouds of mosquitos) with
just a couple of geckos to keep us company.
Having learned from last night we made sure that we were downstairs
at 7:00pm s that the guide could show us where to go to eat. We had
expected to see lots of people from the bus but there was only one
other couple, until we got to the restaurant where half of the bus
were already sitting and chomping away. A good sign was that there
were also a lot of local people here and the food lived up to
expectation and was very tasty, all washed down with a bottle of
Tiger beer.
