Last day in Vietnam

Our last day in Vietnam was a long one.  Tran, our guide, met us at the hotel at 7:30.  We left our luggage in the van and caught a boat to visit the Cai Rang floating vegetable market.  Evidently, the Delta has a pretty sophisticated marketing system, involving ever higher layers of brokers and middlemen.  Buyers visit local farms and buy produce and take it by boat to sell in floating wholesale markets like the one outside Can Tho.  The sellers "advertise" their wares by flying examples of the produce they have on offer from a pole on their boat.  They typically live in the back of the boat and operate their shop out of the front.

The sales boats are serviced by floating cantinas selling refreshments as well as food items.

We saw a creative wedding photagarapher taking pictures on location in the middle of the market.

The Vietnamese government is attempting to resettle slum-dwellers throughout the country into newly built communities, but there still are lots of tin shacks on the water like those I remember from the 70's

After leaving the floating market, we made our way to a workshop where the workers make rice paper and dried rice noodles.  

They also sold snacks, including grilled paddy rats.

We made our way back through the floating market to the wharf by way of a landside retail market on the river bank.  The fish was so fresh it was still jumping in the display tubs.  Tran told us the market opens early and the best produce goes for higher prices in the early morning,  The poor wait to shop later in the day, when the prices have fallen.  The meat on offer typically has been slaughtered around  A.M., so it, too, is very fresh.

After catching the van, we started the 4 hour drive to Chau Doc, a small provincial town close to the Cambodian border.  On the way, we stopped first at a crocodile farm,

and then at a bird sanctuary located in a mangrove swamp.  We toured the  swamp by motorboat and pirogue, seeing hundreds of storks, herons, cormorants and other waterfowl,

and then climbed  lookout tower for a view over the whole preserve.  

The trip through the forest was magical, with clouds of large birds flapping away as our boat motored by.

When our visit to the refuge was complete, we headed into Chau Doc and said farewell to Tran and our driver before checking-in to another nice hotel.  Neither of us has had much experience using guides on past travels, but the extraordinary professionalism displayed by each of the guides that Travel Vietnam assigned us on this trip has made me reconsider the value of having a knowledgeable companion along when traveling in an unfamiliar place.  All of our guides were university trained, friendly, fluent and cheerful.  Tran, our last, was the best of a very good bunch.

We decided to walk into town before nightfall to see the Mekong and walk through the market.  Chau Doc reminds me of Ben Tre in the 1970's - smaller, shabbier and a lot more rough around the edges.  Kathy observed that if this were the first town we'd visited, she'd likely be home by now.

We stopped at a restaurant next to our hotel and had another great meal of seafood and banana flower salad, stir fried beef and onions and basa (Vietnamese catfish) braised in a clay pot.

We leave the hotel at 6:00 tomorrow to catch a speedboat up the Mekong to Phnom Penh.  Vietnam has been wonderful and I'll be sorry to leave.