Our plan was to take a bus from Saigon to Can Tho, spend a night there and visit the floating market early the next morning, then head to Ha Tien also by bus for another night before taking the speed boat from there to Phu Quoc to spend 5 relaxing days on the beautiful island to complete our first journey in Vietnam together (I then flew back to Frankfurt while P stayed with her family in Saigon alone for 10 more days, the parting war hard I tell you…). Taking a bus in Vietnam however, is very much different from taking one in Europe. Although our bus from Saigon to Can Tho was quite comfortable with air-condition and wifi, the trip was tiresome cause the roads were often quite narrow, crowded and bumpy. A distance of roughly 200km could therefore easily take more than 4 hours.
We didn’t book any hotel in advance so the first thing we did upon arriving in Can Tho was looking for one. We had to search around Ninh Kieu Pier for a while (many hotels were fully booked, some overpriced, others too “simple”) before settling for one of the simple local hostel at the waterfront. Nothing fancy but clean and with a nice view across the Mekong river. We spent the afternoon strolling the streets to do what we like most, trying out street foods. The grilled eggs were fun to eat. The eggs are “injected” with some spices through a needle hole on top and then grilled on charcoal. An interesting new way of preparing eggs, we’d never seen it again anywhere else in Vietnam.
We made a mistake though, like most first-time tourists did. At the hotel foyer we were approached by a lady showing us brochures and albums of tours she was trying to sell. Not wanting to waste any more time looking, we decided to book a private boat tour to the floating market for the next morning. Not that we didn’t expect it but it caught us by surprise as she went directly from talking to us to talking to one of the small boat-ladies waiting across our hotel and paid her haft the price to do the tour for us. Needless to say, we were a little upset and felt sorry for the lady who owned the boat and actually did the hard work herself. Our lesson is: for a city like Can Tho you don’t need to book anything in advance. There are enough hotels/hostels at every price range and category at Ninh Kieu Pier. You can just go in, take a look at the room and agree on the price. Same thing with boat tour to the floating market. Go directly to the harbor and talk to any of the boat-owners waiting around and agree on the price and time to leave. You might end up paying exactly what you would have paid to the middle-man, but at least your money will go directly to those who truly earn it. And that’s exactly what we did 3 years later when coming back here.
Well, the experience was a little put-off but didn’t stop us from enjoying our day. We approached the same boat-lady and offered her a small sum to take us out for a small sunset cruise on the Mekong. She was of course very happy to do just that. She took us to a restaurant on an island across the harbor, which was part of a fruit plantation. Having very delicious fish and chilling on hammocks underneath tropical trees was the perfect end of the day:
The next morning at 5am she was already patiently waiting for us in front of our hotel to take us to the floating market, a 40 minutes boat-ride from Ninh Kieu Pier. We were very glad we took the “private” tour in the small boat, just the two of us. We could stop anywhere we wanted for however long we wanted to take photos, have breakfast, or just siting around and let the atmosphere sink in. (The real tourist boats just bring you there in a crowd of 20+ people in a big boat, let you have a quick look from the distance and then head back to the city to pick up the next crowd – not something we would recommend doing.) Imagine a whole sale market on the water with each boat heavily loaded with one kind of fruit, or vegetable only. Have a look at the beautiful scenery:
