Mekong Delta tour day. The previous night I walked into a pharmacy, pointed to my nose, and attempted a sniff to show the lady my predicament. She gave me a nose spray and some zyrtec. These were to no avail. The nose spray felt like a burst of caffeine and zyrtec usually makes me tired. Its like vodka and redbull in pharmaceutical form. I was hopeful that I would feel a little better in the morning but not really. I was still determined to go on my tour, however.
I picked up some street baked goods and water on the way. The tourist company was cool with me leaving my big bag there. Lauren and Martin showed up with some friends of theirs from Canada. One of the Canadian girls looked like Evilynn from He-man; pale, midnight black hair, and obsidian sharp features. Our group was large enough to fill a regulation sized bus. We got on, the bus departed, and our guide got up for an hour long introduction speech that was difficult to hear between the accent and the vehicular noises. It sounded like her name was Wyatt, but it seemed unlikely. I still called her Wyatt whenever I could. She was short and had a very round head with very obvious picket fence dental landmarks.
We got to the delta and trasnferred to a small ferry boat. Lauren suggested I Tiger Balm my nose. I dunno, they say it helps with swelling. I was desperate. The ferry arrived at Candy Island and the Candy Island factory. Not really a factory in the industrialized sense, as most of the work was still done by hand. They made some coconut taffy; I guess you could call it that. I was especially impressed at how the reused the coconut shells to fuel their fires. They also sold a bunch of other sweet snacks that they weren't making there. And then there were the jars of whiskey with snakes and aliens inside of them.
We left Candy Island in our boat, but reparked like 20 feet away at another dock that seemed like it would have been less effort to walk to. We got off and were split into 2 gruops. One to eat lunch and another to ride bikes. I got on the biking group. The bikes were terrible. Not only were they incredibly short but most of them hardly had working brakes. Mine had a seat that was more metal than foam. In the confusion of choosing our bikes, I never heard our guide tell us where to bike to, so I followed the group, but then the group managed to fracture into smaller groups, of which I as in one with about 6 total. Someone had heard our guide say to turn left and then bike to a river. We biked for about 45 minutes but never found a river so we turned back. The Tiger Balm started running into my eyes and I nearly wrecked multiple times. Our guide was waiting for us as we returned, arms crossed, toe tapping, steam rising, pissed. We were like 15 minutes late and were ruining the trip for everyone else! Nobody heard that we had a time limit. We laughed it off, but realized it was probably going to be a long trip.
After a lunch we got back on the boat and stopped again in short time. Then we boarded some canoes that were manned by some local women. They took us on an abreviated tour through the heart of darkness, then demaned generous tips. After this our group split up (some people were on a 1 day trip and had to go home). Our bus continued South to a small town. I never got the name. We got put in a cheap hotel. I shared a room with an older man from Czech Republic who now lives in florida. I think his name was Zeke or Zang or Zander. Something with a Z. He was pretty cool and had shared some stories of life as a Soviet
I went to dinner with Z-man, Martin, and Lauren at a local cafe then we walked around to look for a beer. We had a hard time but settled on a cafe that was showing some Martial Arts movies that were badly dubbed in Vietnamese (Probably from Hong Kong or China). For the local folk, they followed the movement of the fists like spectators at Wimbledon.
We were meant to meet up with our group by 7AM the next morning. Our guide called every room, at least 4 times, to make sure they were up. We had breakfast, got on the bus, and headed to the floating market. This was the part of the trip I was excited to see--a bunch of people on speed boats selling coffee and tea, and a bunch of people on slower boats selling fruit and veggies. So the speedboat guys were like pirates--they would zoom right up to our boat and latch on, then dole out the drinks. Very efficient. The fruit and veggie boats were more stationary and our boat would latch on to them.
After the market we visited a bamboo bridge that I think the Monkey King used. It was hard to understand the story, but it had to do with looking like a monkey when you crossed it. Our guide was being a bit less mean to us now. I guess she was realizing that in the grand scheme of things, 15 minutes isn't much of a setback. Next we walked around a garden, I guess. They had a lot of fruit growing, and then they tried to sell us fruit as we exited. But I thought I could eat off the land for free!
Our last stop in the delta was a rice paper, uh, factory. Again though, not a lot of machinery. Also again, I was impressed that they used the husks of the rice to fuel their fires. There were some ultra cute dogs taking naps here.
We went back to the hotel for lunch and attempted to get on our bus back. Our group was split up again, as some people were there for another day, but it seemed like most people were doing the 2 day trip. Martin and Lauren were also leaving the trip, but instead of going back to Saigon, they were going to take a boat to another Island to spend Christmas. Our bus seemed to be broken down, as there was a guy, covered in oil and tattoos, spelunking inside of it. Our guide kind of disappeared so we had to sit there, unsure of what was going on, as the people working on the bus didn't speak English. Finally a new guide showed up. Eventually the bus got fixed, and thankfully we were on our way back. I wouldn't say it was the greatest adventure, but it was only 99 bucks, so it was well worth it.
