The last day in Vietnam

The new day dawned with a beautiful red sunrise through the fog caused by yesterday's rain.  I'm familiar with the sunrise because we had to get up extremely early in order to get to the floating market, however it was definitely worth the effort.

Unlike other countries, the floating market here is a real market selling fresh produce to locals.  The only allowance for the tourist trade is that there are plenty of small boats selling cold soft drink and coffee, however they are also selling them to the locals.

Petra buys a coke from the floating market

We jumped in another boat and cruised up the lower Mekong to the market.  It was fascinating seeing the people trading, and seeing how they live their lives on those small boats.  After a while of cruising we pulled up next to a largish boat and were able to climb up on top for a long view of the market in general.  They also cut up pineapples into pineapple "lolly pops" for us.

Cruising along the river lined with shanties, boats and palm trees was really nice, but Mikey did comment that it is a country with industrial deafness.  Everywhere you go the diesel engines roar, music is played at major decibels and the people end up yelling at each other.

We moored back in town, a distance away from our hotel so that we could walk through the street market.  It was just what you think of for an Asian market, open air butchers, live fish and prawns in open air tanks and mountains of every type of fresh vegies.

Next up was a nice long bus ride towards Chau Doc.  To break up the journey we stopped at a crocodile farm where we got to view the crocodiles, then we had lunch (not crocodile).  It was very tasty, but much amusement waas caused by Mikey.  He loves drinking coconuts, and today he managed to drink 4 of them at lunch.

The Coco "Nut"

Back on the bus, we all snoozed our way to Chau Doc.  It is a famous pilgrim town built at the bottom of a lone mountain in the middle of the paddy fields.  The largest temple in Vietnam is located here.  It is built around the statue of a lady who the story tells was found 300 years ago on top of the mountain.  The story goes that the people carried her down the mountain and at the base she suddenly became too heavy to carry any further, so they decided she wanted to stay here and they built a temple.  She is very good luck and huge numbers of Vietnamese travel here every year to worship.

Fu suggested we go up the mountain.  Petra, Mikey, Jules and Rob decided to go up on the back of motorbikes.  Oren, Kieran, Megs and I walked up with Fu.  It was stone steps the whole way up the mountain and the air is smokey from burning off the harvested rice paddies mixed with fog from yesterday's rain (and a little bit of rain today).  However the view was fantastic.  We could see all the way to Cambodia.  This area saw some awful fighting, both with the Americans and also with the Khmer Rouge.

We made our way back down the mountain and visited the temple of the lady.  It is a massive complex, but the amazing thing is really the offerings people have given.  People do the usual thing of food, incence etc but people have also donated thick strings of pearls, gold embroidered robes, hats, etc.  It was quite amazing.

It is peak pilgrimage season and the town is packed, but Fu took us for dinner at a local place and we had Pho and pork with rice for dinner.  It was great.

The heat was still pretty oppressive out, so we have all retired to the (somewhat pathetic) airconditioning of Mikey and my room for a catch up to the raging sounds of a fair and karaoke below.  Fingers crossed it doesn't go too late because we have another early start tomorrow to go to Cambodia!!!