After our brief sojourn in Châu Đốc (where Steve got absolutely bitten to death by some stealth bug that appeared mystically during the night), we headed deep into the Mekong Delta to the principal city of Cần Thơ (pronounced "kun tur"). The trip was largely uneventful except to observe that, for an area riddled with canals and rivers, the local authority has not figured out how to construct a smooth transition from road to bridge or vice versa, so we bounced and jolted over innumerable waterways en route. You would think they would have this figured out.

This edition comprises a collection of Mekong towns, as we work our way through the Delta towards Ho Chi Minh City. As we mentioned before, it is mostly about water and boats, which makes a change from trains!

Cần Thơ

The name means "musical poem" and, as you might expect, there is a legend behind how the name came about - but not a very interesting one. Our reason for coming here is that it is the best place to be based to explore the Mekong Delta...or so we thought.

Cần Thơ is a large university town with a relatively young population. As such, there are cafés, restaurants and bars aplenty, which is nice. There is also a pleasant landscaped promenade along the side of the river; or there was until they dug it up. Now, the imposing statue of Uncle Ho gazes down on to a building site. The riverside location is rather reminiscent of Iquitos on the Amazon (including the mossies). Also, rather like on the Ganges, we are approached repeatedly by people wanting to take us out in their boats. Unlike in India, the interaction is pleasant and cheerful with nary a hint of hassle or aggression.

We did take a trip out by boat since this really is the main attraction. The idea is to get up at some ludicrous time in the morning and travel down river to see the floating markets, which function best in the early hours. For some reason that Steve will never fathom, we arranged to get up at 4:30am ON NEW YEAR'S DAY, to catch our boat!

We had a guide for this trip (endearingly named Flower) and she explained that the first market we visited was where the wholesalers (she called them middle-men) sold produce they had bought from the surrounding farms. Needless to say, they have large boats and can travel over 100km along the river to get to this market and they won't return until they have sold everything. Rather reminiscent of the large supermarket lorries we see holding up traffic in the UK.

Later we moved on to a second market which was for the public to buy produce and this was characterised by much smaller boats and also smaller quantities being traded. Here the traders were predominantly women. It is easy to see that these people spend a lot of time on the water. Their boat and produce handling skills are impressive and no one was observed to fall in!

The floating markets were quaint and colourful and even worth getting up early to see, but one gets the impression that they are fading fast as improving land-based infrastructure and transportation links render them pointless. Likely they will linger on as a tourist attraction. Certainly the first market we visited attracted a lot of gringo boats. The second one, not so much.

In addition to the floating markets, we were boated around some of the small canals that criss-cross the entire Mekong region and which are very picturesque; although there is the ever present danger of a coconut on the head! At one point, we visited a cocoa farm where the owner makes organic chocolate from first principles. He was a helicopter pilot during the war (he served two years inside after the "liberation"). For the last forty years he has operated the farm which has been in the family for ten generations. They grow the coca beans and then turn them into chocolate entirely by hand. The only automation was a grindstone connected to an electric motor and a ten ton hydraulic jack (for squeezing out cocoa butter) - Heath Robinson, but effective. The end product was actually rather splendid and our host proudly explained that he was just now arranging to export the finished product to...Belgium and Switzerland! Good work.

We should say that Mr Chocolate Factory also manufactured a rather nifty wine out of parts of the bean not used in the chocolate process. In fact, not only was the farm organic, but they seemed to find a use for everything and nothing went to waste. Even the cocoa husks were reused as fertiliser.

We also took a trip around a noodle factory, which is not something you get to say every day. Megan had a go at making rice paper and then we both attempted to operate the noodle cutting machine. It is rather like a bread slicer but for cutting rice paper into very thin noodles. Simple, but it ran rather too fast for our ham-fisted efforts. At least there were no noodle fingers.

There is a museum in Cần Thơ that explains life in the Mekong Delta (or it would if we could read Vietnamese). Additionally, it contains the usual assortment of rusty guns and bombs from the war. There is a proudly displayed bit of aeroplane still showing the American stars and stripes and a bunch of old photographs showing the victorious North Vietnamese forces overrunning the Americans and capturing their tanks - as usual, the victor gets to write the history.

Since we missed celebrating New Year's eve due to our ludicrous tour arrangements, we splashed out and shared a Ben & Jerry's ice-cream on New Year's day (which cost the same as an evening meal). The entire city of Cần Thơ is bedecked with coloured lights celebrating New Year, which is rather weird since the Vietnamese New Year isn't until 9th February this year. It is not clear whether all the pomp, music and celebration is for the tourists' benefit or if it is just the start of extended local celebrations. Certainly, whilst we celebrate a single evening, Tết New Year festival fever is already building and everyone is getting very excited. In the meantime, lots of locals took the time to wish us a Happy New Year. We shall be sure to reciprocate in February.

This place really comes alive at night. Perhaps due to the 35°C heat during the day, everyone appears after dark. It is not clear to us how many of the Vietnamese here are on holiday and how many live here, but there is certainly a party atmosphere. In addition to the ubiquitous karaoke bars and wedding celebrations, the locals seem to like to go out on a river boat cruise for an evening meal. These massive floating restaurants trundle up and down the river just off the promenade at about 1 knot, serving food and blasting out impossibly loud and inappropriate techno music like some Mississippi riverboat on acid.

Like we said, part of the reason for coming to Cần Thơ was that we thought it was the best place from which to explore the Mekong. However, when we came to move on to our next destination, we were met by blank stares. You want to go where? Why? How? We established that we could hire a car and driver to take us to Vĩnh Long or we could book on some kind of organised tour and bail out half way. A third option presented to us was to buy a bus ticket to Saigon and ask the driver to drop us off at the side of the highway somewhere near where we wanted to be and then try and find a taxi. None of these were appealing options since our destination was only 30km away. We are in full traveller mode now and are not prepared to pay £15 for a man to drive us. Back to the drawing board...

Vĩnh Long

We made our way to the bus station in Cần Thơ and were immediately accosted by hundreds of bus drivers wanting to sell us tickets on fast, air-conditioned buses to...anywhere. When we said we were going to Vĩnh Long, then that was suddenly where they were going. This behaviour can be forgiven since this is the way all foreigners travel around the country. Perhaps their preconception about our requirements can further be explained by the fact that we were in the bus station dedicated to fast, air-conditioned buses! Once we found our way to the correct bus station, a man who looked like Michael Jackson (complete with white suit and fedora) put us on his local bus.

Much like in India, the so-called local bus actually turns out to be much better than its larger, privately run, air-conditioned brethren. The driver does not need to stop at every lamppost to pick up extra paying passengers to earn his commission, so we bounced and jolted along in a half-empty bus with a fan and music going, stopping only at official bus stops. Granted we did transport some large parcels as well as people, but the whole experience was surprisingly pleasant and we were delivered right to the heart of Vĩnh Long rather than being dumped at the outskirts at the mercy of the taxi drivers. What is more, as a bonus, the 30km journey took less than two hours.

We had arranged a so-called "home-stay" on an island in the Mekong for a couple of nights and we needed to take a boat from Vĩnh Long. It was rather a large boat and the tide was going out. The boat was probably four times longer than the canal was wide. The driver (the throttle was operated by accelerator pedal) skillfully navigated these narrow channels, sometimes using mangroves to bounce the prow off as he delivered us to the door of our home-stay. In Vietnam a home-stay is actually someone's house with some rooms added on for guests. Whilst you don't live with the family, you do get to experience their lifestyle to an extent and they provide meals. We were invited into the kitchen to participate in a cookery class - actually just us cooking our own food, but fun none the less. During our home-stay we learned;

• The Vietnamese may get up early, but their roosters get up even earlier.
• Beds in the house are even harder than on the trains.
• Vietnamese kids can be fat and hyperactive and have the ability to vomit when they don't get their own way.
• Despite how it is billed, life in the Mekong is not idyllic and peaceful; boat engines mix with loud music, barking dogs and screeching kids.
• Cooking is cooking, there is no secret sauce.

We borrowed bicycles from the family and trundled around the sandy paths that criss-cross the Mekong. Unsurprisingly, there were plenty of bridges to navigate most of which looked like they had been designed by a five year old. They go up and down very steeply which is testament to the size of boat that navigates these narrow channels. Undoubtedly, life here is ruled by the water and we ended up navigating by following rivers and channels. At one point we found a little café. The owner spoke no English, but we had just about enough Vietnamese to order a hot black coffee and an iced coffee. In addition to this, we were also supplied with a pot of fragrant tea, a bundle of fresh rambutan and a plate of dried bananas (the latter being unacceptable to Steve due to an unfortunate incident on the Bolivian border involving same). The total charge for all this hospitality, 45p.

We didn't spend more than a couple of hours in Vĩnh Long town itself. The guide book writes it off as largely uninteresting and it does appear that its only draw for tourists is that it serves as a gateway to the home-stays and, even then, only if you approach from the south like we did. Most people come from the north since Ho Chi Minh City is an easy drive away. All the other people in our home-stay turned up with guides. As they leave with their guides after only one night, we are left with the difficult task of explaining to our hosts that we don't want a boat back to Vĩnh Long, rather a motorbike along the island to the local bus station where we can catch an onward local bus to Bến Tre.

Bến Tre

We were ferried to the local bus station on motorbikes by the girls who cooked our food at the home-stay. A helpful fellow took both our rucksacks on another bike. The 47km to Bến Tre cost 70p each, but we were asked to pay for our bags to travel too. After objecting half-heartedly, Steve insisted rather churlishly that, if we had to pay for the bags, then they should get seats too. A hollow victory really. Luckily the bus did not fill up so we did not need to eat humble pie and move them from their allotted seats. Again, the local bus dropped us off within easy walking distance of our destination.

The hotel in Bến Tre rather generously upgraded our room to a large one with a spectacular river view. This proved to be a mixed blessing (actually, no blessing at all) since river traffic flows all night as do the bikes and lorries along the promenade. Additionally, using our intimate and detailed knowledge of all things Vietnamese, we spotted the makings of a wedding celebration being set up outside the window. Next morning we requested a downgrade and moved to the back of the hotel. The wedding actually turned out to be two weddings (we talked about funerals earlier right?). Both were booked to run at the same time which would lead to an impressive amplified karaoke battle. Sadly we were due to be on a boat at the time.

After going on a pre-booked and organised river trip and doing the home-stay, we decided to give the locals a chance and said we would go with some random dude in the street to see what they had to offer. The lucky local who struck at exactly the right time with an offer to take us out on his boat was a chap named Lanh. He showed us his book of references including one from some people in Bristol so we decided to take a punt with him (so to speak).

Our tour pretty much followed the standard itinerary that all the tours follow. We had seen mini-buses turning up from Saigon loaded with tourists and the route Lanh followed was the same as they took. However, because our boat was smaller, when they had to turn round due to narrowing channels, we pressed on. Eventually, Lanh turned off the engine and we manhandled the boat by grabbing the water coconut trees and pulling ourselves through the forest. At one point we became stuck and had to wait for the tide to come in before we could press on. Certainly this was off the beaten track. Eventually, we popped out of the other end into a larger channel and started to see the tour boats again.

River tours here include a stop off at a factory where they turn coconuts into sweets. You can taste the coconut and the sweets and it became pretty clear that Lanh was a coconut fan as he stuffed as much free produce into his face as possible. They also make coconut and rice wine and Steve did try some with the snakes in it. This version must have been an up-market variety as it had an gecko in it which seemed to double as a ladle.

We also stopped at a place where they make matting by hand out of sedge and, for some reason, a brick factory. What is interesting about all these places is that they are each in their own village where all the families carry out the same kind of work. The brick factory was fourth generation, for example. The use of the word "factory" is rather misleading. It seems to be a bunch of women sitting around creating the produce by hand (probably for the tourists) and, of course, they have a little gift shop. The exception was the brick kilns where it was a bunch of men sitting around drinking rice wine.

At the culmination of our river trips, we returned to the hotel to find the weddings all but done. All that remained was a bunch of drunk young lads determined to get their money's worth from the rented karaoke gear. We sat outside with a cold drink and waited for them to exhaust their repertoire of grunts and screams before finally stumbling outside to try and find their motorbikes. This accomplished, they wove their way off in the traffic acting pretty much indistinguishable from everyone else on two wheels.

We have a strong feeling that you will have had enough of boats and water-related activities by now, so it is time for us to leave the Mekong Delta and head back to civilisation. Our next stop is Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon. It will be a bit of a shock to go somewhere relatively civilised after spending so long slumming it in the boonies. Might have to get some washing done! See you next time.