HCMC to Can Tho
Beez Neez now Chy Whella
Big Bear and Pepe Millard
Wed 27 Dec 2017 23:07
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Ho Chi Minh City to Can Tho    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.
  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.
  Trendy last bit
of HCMC and into traffic, lots of it.
   Trees and other
bikers get in the way of our favourite loads.
  Poor bikes have
a tough time but we have fun spotting them.
  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.
   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.
  Our Happy Stop (comfort break to others)
was filled with life-sized cows.....
 Strange
foodstuffs wrapped in green leaves and dangling from
hooks.....
 ....lots of
them.
  Giant river
fish.
 Plastic. Every cheap toy ever produced.
  Hundreds of clown
fish including a shy one.
  Dodgy looking
rice with dried fish. Eggs, pilchards and mosquito
coil.......
 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.
  Settled on our tour
boat, spuddling up the Mekong
River.
 So much
rubbish.
   People
watching.
 We
enjoyed the buoy service station, very
unexpected.
 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 |