Happy Tuesday, everyone! I hope you all had a great start of the week. I've been pretty knocked out since we got back from Vietnam. I caught a bronchitis the last day of our trip and couldn't really leave the house until yesterday. However, it did give me some time to prepare this new blog post for you guys. I hope you enjoy reading it!
Can Tho Night Market
We really wanted to see the Mekong Delta and do a river tour when in Vietnam so we decided to head to Can Tho, the largest city in the Mekong Delta area. It was an easy and comfortable three-hour bus ride from Ho Chi Minh City. On our first day in Can Tho we visited a night market which was basically just a street food market but a great discovery! We had some yummy sweet dish consisting of fresh fruit, jelly, peanuts, condensed milk and ice which seemed to be very popular among young people. For dinner we had cơm cháy kho quẹt, a crispy fried rice dish served with a mouth-watering spicy dip and fresh cucumber. We were the only tourists at the night market but so happy we made it there, the food offered at every little stand looked amazing! Also, eating out is sooo cheap in Vietnam. During our three-week trip we didn't cook once. The Vietnamese street food is just so delicious and a dish costs only about one to three euros.
Once we got back to our hotel we decided to book a Floating Market Tour for the next day with the help of our hotel's nice receptionist.
Floating Market Tour
On our second day in Can Tho, we had to get up early because a taxi picked us up at the hotel around 5 am. The driver dropped us off at a dock where a lovely Vietnamese lady waited for us on her wooden boat. We left Can Tho watching a beautiful sunrise from the river. It was only 6.30 am or so when we reached the Mekong Delta's biggest floating market, the Cai Rang Floating Market. Here we enjoyed some tasty soup for breakfast. It's very common that Vietnamese people eat hearty food early in the morning. We made our way through the floating market which I honestly didn't enjoy too much because there were lots of bigger boats so you couldn't even see their market products from below. We didn't stay at the first floating market for too long but headed further down the river to the more traditional Phong Dien Floating Market which I liked much more. There were about ten locals selling goods, mostly fruit and veggies, on their little wooden rowing boats. You could watch and hear them chat, negotiate and cut fruit. Our lovely captain got us some pitaya, pineapple and mango, a welcome treat after the salty soup.
After this cultural experience we made our way to and through some beautiful smaller mangrove canals. I loved this more natural part of our tour since the floating markets took place in a quite busy, more industrial area and the river there was bigger and very polluted. The side canals on the other hand were much cleaner and surrounded by mud and greenery. We were all alone here, just the two of us and our nice captain who did such a great job rowing us through the lush vegetation. At some point we got off the boat and had the chance to explore the area a bit. We also visited a rice noodle factory. We ate rice noodles almost every single day during our Vietnam trip so it was fun to see how they're made. From there it took us about one and a half hours to get back to where we started. Surprisingly our captain dropped us off on the riverbank right next to our hotel. What a great and very much appreciated organisation. All in all we had a fabulous six-hour trip with many different stops and interesting things to see! I would totally recommend this boat excursion to anyone visiting Can Tho. We payed only about 15€ per person for this trip and had an unforgettable time. More posts about our adventures in Vietnam are coming soon!
