The night seemed to drag on and on like a bad conversation with your wife, discussing why you didn't put the toilet lid down. It was a rubbish nights sleep. Tossing and turning, waking up every now and again feeling like I hadn't been asleep at all. I remember waking up around 2am clutching to the edge of the bed as if I was being rammed off by a raging bull. I was, and that bull was Nicola. I took my leave from the bed and assessed the situation. Yep, one sprawled out Nicola hogging the bed with her little eye mask on. I just sighed and walked around to the other side of the bed and got in. It took around another 5 minutes for Nicola to realise I was missing, before she sat up on bed like a meerkat scouring the room for me. It took a further 20 seconds for her to realise she couldn't see anything with her eye mask on. Once she found me, she mumbled something about "i thought you had a snake on you" and got back to treating me as if I was that illusive red flag she had been raging for.
Hours past and it was time to get up. 6.30am, the earliest start we'd had in a while. We'd booked onto a tour that started at 7.30am that would take us from Ho Chi Minh city, up the world famous Mekong delta to a half way stop for the night and then on into Cambodia to the Capitol city Phnom Phen. Fortunately, We'd already packed our bags the night before, so once we did get up all we had to do was have a wash, brush our teethe and head downstairs for breakfast.
We were down for breakfast by 7am, if you could call it that. I don't really think we've been having many successful breakfasts in Vietnam. I wouldn't even say it was a culture thing, I just don't think they really do breakfast. We got the typical omelette, bread and jam, but only bothered to eat the omelette, washing it down with a coffee after the night I'd had. We settled the bill swiftly and awaited our pick up, in which we were then picked up around 7.45. We were met by a jolly little fat man whom I'd call the Vietnamese version of the fat controller from Thomas the tank engine. He hurried us away from the hotel as we gathered our gear and said goodbye to the hotel staff. As we walked along the hotel alleyway to the bus we met various other couples who were also doing the same tour, if not slightly different variances as us. We hauled ourselves onto our bus but were then told we'd only be changing buses again anyway in five minutes to a different set of buses that would then separate the different groups of people onto their respective tours.
Finally, after climbing around from bus to bus like children at the whacky warehouse, we settled down on our bus at the front seat. For the first half of the day we thought this was a good call as the back of the bus had a very busy feel to it with all the people sat around talking, and as I was tired it would be nice to get away from the noise and get some shut eye. however, it got less comfy as the day got on though as we felt as if we had less leg room then a regular 'back of the bus' seat.
We drove for two and a half hours from Ho Chi Minh towards the delta at a reasonable pace, not much traffic, passing through rice paddies, tree farms and friendly villages until we stopped half way for a toilet break. It was a different stop to usual, as the place we were at had dozens of hammocks around instead of chairs to relax in. It also had small juice glasses with a yellowy liquid in that upon further inspection housed one small fish per glass. We couldn't figure whether they were selling the fish, or it was some weird drink you had, eating the fish alive at the end. Unfortunately we didn't have enough time to find out and by the time we'd relieved ourselves of the morning beverage we were shepherded back onto the bus.
An hour later we arrived at the river where we boarded a small wooden boat, ready for the first part of our tour which was to visit a local floating Market. It was a this point where we saw her. I really don't mean to come across as a rude and horrible person, but she was massive. I actually thought a whale had made its way up the river and somehow joined our tour. Even Nicola was cracking comments and that's saying something. A massive Scottish girl, she looked like a right state. I can't believe we didn't miss her before, maybe that's why it took two and a half hours to travel the 90km from Ho Chi Minh to the delta, the bus must have weighed a ton. She got onto the boat and it immediately sunk on the side she sat down on.... no joking. Nicola said she looked like Hagrid from Harry potter, I think Hagrid looked like her! Anyway, we zoomed up the delta for 15 minutes, taking in the hustle and bustle of the river and market before pulling up to a local business where they made local rice wine, coconut juice, coconut candy and coconut soap. We were shown around the shop and a small area where they made all of the goods and got to try a little bit of all of the edible stuff. One of the biggest surprises was the coconut candy as we got told this was the only country it was sold in and that none of it was exported. It was actually really nice so we decided to buy a small pack as a pressie for someone. We weren't there that long and were back on the boat within ten minutes.
We headed off up the river again for an hour towards where we were having lunch until we stopped near a small village and hopped onto push bikes. There wasn't enough push bikes for everyone so some people got a motorbike taxi, not to our surprise, Hagrid was one of them. Just before the push bikes we witnessed our first ever cockfight where we saw one kill the other with a group of around five guys betting over it. I always imagined it would be worse than it was, but it didn't last long and there wasn't any blood, eventually one of the cockerels just seemed to flop over and die, maybe from exhaustion. The group biked up local road until we reached a local restaurant where we had the blandest chicken and rice dinner since we'd been away. We were sat with other people from the tour, a couple from Canada who I mistakenly thought were from the states, which I was immediately slated for, and a weird guy from Denmark. We chatted away whilst enjoying our cardboard and chewy stuff, with no drink may I add, talking about what we'd done in Vietnam, our favourite things we did and what we were doing after. After lychees for puddin' we used the loos and then got back on the bikes for a short ride back to the boat.
Hagrid climbed the boat and sat down, but this time got made to sit in the middle at the front as it literally was causing problems for the boat. As we begun the next leg of our journey, another hour up the river to our bus we noticed her quite upset at the front by the fact she was clearly embarrassed.
We arrived at the bus, sat at the front again and travelled for two hours to a ferry to take us across a big section of the river. We ate crisps whilst we waited as we weren't satisfied from our lunch. It took twenty minutes to cross and then after a short five minute journey we arrived at the next leg of our tour, a crocodile farm.
Well, that's not that much to say about it. To be honest, I felt quite disappointed with the whole day as we've been rushed around left right and centre. We arrived at the farm in which we were left to our own devises. There were thousands of them, 15,000 in total. It was such a cool place, but it's a shame we didn't have longer or someone to really explain what was going on. We had a small helper from the farm follows us around who was happy to give statistics and what they farmed the crocs for; skin for leather and meat exported around Asia for eating but that was It.I spent more time helping him with his English then being toured around. We probably spent 20 minutes there and were back on the bus again for another two hour journey to our hotel for the night.
We arrived at our hotel after napping on and off on the way, seeing various sites, a man carrying 30 geese on his motorbike with them all quaking out of the side in their baskets, plenty of crazy road rage from our driver who I ended up quite liking due to his Tourette's style driving which I could relate to. We arrived at our 'floating hotel' around 7pm, which was a hotel on the mekong delta river. We promptly got off the bus and got our room key before heading to the room. We were pleasantly surprised as the room was nice and it was included in the tour price so we didn't expect much. double bed, ensuite bathroom and wifi, perfect after a really long day, especially for me due to the night before.
We chucked our bags down and immediately headed for a small bite to eat, not being able to manage a big dinner due to tiredness. We got some chips, I had a couple of beers and Nicola had a cocktail and once it was all polished off we headed to bed around 9pm. I collapsed on the bed and Nicola jumped in the shower, she woke me up after she finished and we both had a wash and settled in for the night. We have another early start in the morning, wish us both luck!
