HCMC to Can Tho

Beez Neez now Chy Whella
Big Bear and Pepe Millard
Wed 27 Dec 2017 23:07
Ho Chi Minh City to Can Tho
 
 
 
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We had an early breakfast, took a taxi to the tour office arriving just before eight. A chap walked us to the park corner to wait with others until our bus came. Time to take in local fashion (as many colours as you can but this lady needs a bit more blue and green). Electrickery is very busy here. A chap had just changed from his front stretching to his right side.
 
 
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Strange to see such a big park in the middle of such a crazy city that uses every square inch available. Settled on the bus for the one hundred and seventy kilometre journey. HCMC always proves to be well worth looking out of the window. In amongst all the tooting scooters, motorbikes, tourists an pedestrians, a man sleeps soundly on his rickshaw.
 
 
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Trendy last bit of HCMC and into traffic, lots of it.
 
 
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Trees and other bikers get in the way of our favourite loads.
 
 
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Poor bikes have a tough time but we have fun spotting them.
 
 
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A shoe shop on the side of the road and a pagoda down beyond the bridge. Talking of bridges, we almost go airborne at each of the expansion joints and we hear many groans as sleeping passengers get knocked about and bounced.
 
 
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Our first stop is at a bamboo production factory. A lady demonstrates how cotton fibre sinks and bamboo fibres float. She puts soya sauce and oil on a dishcloth and magically rinses it with only water. One of our group has to be the beautiful model as we all watch how a bamboo knitted scarf becomes a dress, shawl, beach robe and twenty three other garments........ We are shepherded into the vast shop where what seems like a hundred sales people have tentacles insisting we buy. Bear did fancy a new shower back scrub, I had two dish cloths and a new hair turban. First time I have ever handed over two 500,000 notes in my life.
 
 
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Our Happy Stop (comfort break to others) was filled with life-sized cows.....
 
 
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Strange foodstuffs wrapped in green leaves and dangling from hooks.....
 
 
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....lots of them.
 
 
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Giant river fish.
 
 
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Plastic. Every cheap toy ever produced.
 
 
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Hundreds of clown fish including a shy one.
 
 
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Dodgy looking rice with dried fish. Eggs, pilchards and mosquito coil.......
 
 
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Outside, four giants swimming in unison, they could be an Olympic team. Shame to see five-footers in very shallow water, no weed or gravel to scruff about in.
 
 
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Settled on our tour boat, spuddling up the Mekong River.
 
 
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So much rubbish.
 
 
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People watching.
 
 
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We enjoyed the buoy service station, very unexpected.
 
 
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We pull up behind so many other tour boats for our first Mekong stop. 
 
 
 
ALL IN ALL SUCH A MIXED BAG
                     A REALLY GREAT DAY