Greeting everyone! I’m in Mekong delta again, my main destination is Phu Guoc island this time. Because I’m scared of flying, so I made a stopover in Can Tho, the biggest city in Mekong Delta. (There’s no train down South).
I don’t like Can Tho much, otherwise, I would prefer to travel slowly and stay longer in each place instead of constantly moving from place to place. But that’s also the good thing when you travel alone, you can decide to move or stay whenever you want.
I liked other places in Mekong Delta, I even liked just to sitting in the bus watching people sitting in those hammocks. Mekong Delta is all about hammocks. Everyone has a few hammocks in their rooms, their restaurants, their boats, or even just in front of street.
^ something like this, you see everywhere in this area
As I mentioned in the previous post, you see both big boats and small boats. My advice is to go past this area with big public boats and get a private boat with one of the boat ladies. Because I took the big boat and didn’t like it that much.
Standard price is 100k for a seat in the big boat and 250k for private boat. I asked my homestay host which one she recommends, which turned out to be a mistake.
Sometimes when travelling, local advice isn’t necessarily the best advice, simply because people travel differently, and tour mentality is huge. I should have known better because I grew up in China and I was totally traumatised by tours. I feel such a bummer as I travel independently, but still fell into suh a tourist trap lol. Can’t really blame homestay owner either I guess, it’s just the major tourism problem around the world, what you think is good isn’t always good for others. That’s also something we can all work on to understand each other better and eventually to make this world better.
I mean, I couldn’t say it was a rip off since the price isn’t really a rip off but the whole thing is. It took 4-5 hours and the interesting part was only a short while where you got to see how small boats sold fruits and stuff. It was fun, but then unnecessary part was visiting rice noodle factory, fruit garden etc. Typical touristic trap, Vietnam is quite a folklore place, many of such things we can watch and learn it simply from the street.
Part of the problem was also because of the language barrier and non transparency of the tour itself, I was tired to use google translator to communicate about the details etc.
I don’t have much planned this time, so theoretically I could have stayed longer, try to get up early again and get a private the next morning. Or I could even take a taxi to another less touristy market 12 km away and try to take a boat again there. But then I just felt a bit overwhelmed by Can Tho and didn’t feel like doing it anymore. Maybe better to see a more authentic floating market in Cambodia next time.
Complaints done, anyway I learnt my lesson.
Here are some pictures I was able to take in Cai Rang floating market:
selfie in the boat during the first pleasant hours
It was fun to watch how vendors attached their small boats to the big boats and started selling goods to us.
(dunno if gif can show, but that boat lady doesn’t always seem happy as the pic above)
Life along Mekong Delta canals
quiet canal after the market finished
