Can Tho, our first stop, is in the middle of the Mekong delta in South Vietnam and famous for its floating markets, where hundreds of boats gather each morning to trade fresh fruit and veg. Fuelled by the ubiquitous Vietnamese coffee, which is extremely strong and sweet (sort of like Stay Puft from Ghostbusters), we took a dawn boat trip to see the action and visited a little rice noodle factory while we were at it. The process is quite different to spaghetti - rice flour batter is cooked like pancakes and then dried in the sun, before being fed into something not unlike an office paper shredder to cut the noodles. We even got to meet the factory mascot - an albino hedgehog!
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| A Can Tho Attitude |
We arrived in the week leading up to Lunar New Year (known as Tet) - when Vietnamese people often go to stay with family in their home towns, with the result that the smaller towns fill up with people from the big cities. Can Tho and Ben Tre, our next Delta stop, are described as 'quiet' by the guidebooks but the brilliantly bright seasonal flower markets were brimming with thousands of people, often weaving through on mopeds laden with bonsai trees in a chaotic and deafening fashion. Everyone was enjoying the festival atmosphere, and when we were drawn to a tempting food cart selling sticky coconut wafers, the merry people around it decided to treat us to some and chatted to us happily, despite us not speaking one another's languages.
We felt more integrated into the crowd than we had in Cambodia, perhaps because of the festival busy-ness making us stand out less. Instead of being hassled by tuk-tuks and souvenir stalls we were largely ignored. This didn't feel unfriendly and was a welcome relief. When we did show interest in products the people were happy to help and joke around (one lady thought our attempts to indicate a quarter kilo with hand gestures was particularly hilarious, and another guy saved us from eating a bright orange fruit intended solely for decorative purposes).
We toured the beautiful waterways around Ben Tre; quickly visiting a brick kiln, eating our way through a large Elephant Ear fish, listening to a pretty good local band practice (who keep the neighbouring restaurant owner awake at night) and then seeing a coconut candy workshop. Coconut candy is amazingly chewy and sweet, like soft nutty toffee, and is made from coconut milk mixed with local palm sugar and malt, sometimes with an added bonus of peanuts or chocolate. This process of turning coconuts into sweets is all done on one site with the aid of some alarming tools, including a machete embedded in the ground for tearing the husks off and a grinder to remove the flesh!
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| Mekong Delta in bloom |
I had a great time getting stuck into Vietnamese food (not literally), which is fresh, cheap and very varied. While rice dominates in Laos and Cambodia, noodles, pancakes and dumplings play greater roles in Vietnamese cuisine. We messily tried Bánh xèo – a crispy pancake with meat and veg, eaten by wrapping a chunk in lettuce leaves with mint and dipping in fish or sweet chilli sauce. Bánh bao is Jon's new favourite snack - a large Chinese-style steamed pork bun, often with boiled quail eggs inside and available everywhere.
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| Top-left: A street pancake pizza fusion! Bottom-left: Bánh xèo pancake construction Right: Frog - the exact texture and flavour of chicken |
Ben Tre town lacked any kind of English language travel agent so when it was time to leave we were lucky to happen across an out-of-the-way coach depot which ushered us and our bags on to a bus that departed instantly. Arriving in Ho Chi Minh City (also still known by its older, more famous and exotic name of Saigon), we were pleasantly surprised. It's Vietnam's largest metropolis, but feels more green and spacious than the comparatively crowded Bangkok and Phnom Penh. Even bearing in mind that many people had left the city for Tet (and many businesses were indeed closed) it was calmer and friendlier than the urban insanity we had been told to expect.
Our first night in Saigon was Tet Eve, the last night of the lunar calendar and the night of the biggest celebrations. We hadn't known in advance, but while we had been looking around some of the impressively colorful, horsey street decorations (2014 is the year of the horse) we met a Canadian-Vietnamese couple who told us about the midnight festivities taking place by the river.
We headed down that evening, joining a mass of people that grew steadily more dense, until we had to hold hands to keep from getting separated and even the moped riders parked up and went on foot. At the riverside there must have been a hundred thousand or more, all eating and drinking in a much less raucous fashion than they would have been back home. There was only one block of portaloos nearby - we queued for over an hour, but thankfully were out before midnight. The ensuing fireworks display was the most protracted and lavish I have ever seen, going on for over 15 minutes and including huge rosettes, colourful flares and golden falls of sparks.
We stayed in Saigon for a few days, mostly visiting some of the hundreds of cafés in the central District 1, where the backpacker streets are situated. We had been hoping to add another month to our visas, but with all government offices along with most other places closed for the holiday we were resigned to checking out the tourist markets and drinking matcha (Japanese style drink made from powdered green tea, one of my favourite things).
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| Tet celebrations in Saigon |
There was a tiny bit of drama on our last night when we returned to our guesthouse to find the shutters down and the entire Ho Chi Minh City fire department watching a chip-pan esque fire raging in the eatery next door. We sat on a wall across the road, mulling over the prospect of our belongings, passports and money potentially going up in flames. Fortunately it didn't come to that as once a few gallons of water had been emptied into the building, the inferno was quenched and all was well.
- Kath
If when you guys return, you utter the phrase "you had to be there, man!" to add emphasis to anything epic on this leg of the trip, forgiveness will not be given - seriously though, some of that food sounds awesome and the pictures look stunning!
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