Day Two on the Mekong River

After a restful night we were ready to tackle the busier part of the river. Yesterday we boated and biked through canals and narrow pathways, today we toured the floating markets which showed the hustle and bustle of life on the river as Vietnam knows it.








The markets open around 5:30 am and run until 10:00 am. The seller's boats are moored on the open river for over a month or until their supplies run out. They live on these boats, but have a smaller boat that they use to go to the orchards to get their supplies.


The buyers show up in their own boats to purchase cheap fruit and vegetables for their restaurants or their own market in town.





This market is strictly for the local people and is not set up for tourists, although they do tolerate the tour boats floating through the market. The local boats don't look very sea-worthy to me, but neither did the tour boat below!


Women would wind their small sampans through this maze to sell breakfast from their boats.


We had to force ourselves to leave this exciting area to go check out the orchards and to sample many of the different fruits they sell.

The Mekong River has so many canals branching off that the only comparison I can make is that it is like 8th Street with the canals being the streets that come off there, like Preston Avenue.

The tour, even though it was just new, was awesome and our tour guide was perfect for me as he never lingered too long in one place. Today he was a little slower as he must have partied too hard last night and this morning much of his free time was spent finding a place to throw up. Did we give him a rough time? Never! I hear Ukraine tour guides do much the same thing.

We are now back in Saigon with plans to do very little this evening. Tomorrow we will try to see some of the sites of the city, buying last minute gifts and trinkets.

We head out to Bangkok on the evening of the 23rd so the time of trying to get all our things into a small backpack is getting closer.