BREAKING POINT! 09/04/09

Floating markets in the Mekong delta

Delicious jackfruit

Everybody has one? Mine revealed itself in a bus station outside Ho Chi Minh City, rain hammering down, with Western running around desperately trying to find the right bus to get us the final 10 kms into town. Boarded about 7 of them, all wrong eventhough I was assured that they were all ok.... finally I was instructed that bus number 2 was the one we needed.....except there was no driver and the doors were closed - I turned my back for what must have been 10 seconds and in that time the driver had gotten on board with about 10 customers and was driving out of the station, I chased him down banging on the side of the bus, but the bugger kept going. I'm not going to tell you what I said, because you can probably guess but I reached a volume never attained before as I stood there saturated and with my luminous, green 'waterproof' backpack cover, like a fuming kermit the frog. This little incident followed a rather forgettable 133km journey that involved 3 different buses - all of them crap for different reasons. This has come early into our Vietnamese travels and judging by how comfortable most tourists feel Vietnam is, I can only guess that on this particular day, getting out of the Mekong Delta was not the norm. I found one person who I could converse with - all be it, in a rather laboured fashion ('dont you speak any English AT ALL?'). We have now mastered numbers 1 to 10 and some rudimentary phrases such as "Which chuffing bus do we need to get?"

The previous few days had been excellent, we travelled through the Mekong Delta and after just under 3 months from first seeing the Mekong in the Laotion capital Vientianne, we finally said goodbye to this beauty in Vinh Long, Vietnam - one of the world's greats. The delta is so fertile it provides Vietnam with all its rice plus a fair surplus and the fruit and veg markets are wonderfully rich. Mangoes, papayas, rambutan, durian, jack fruit, plums, pineapple, dragon fruit, avocados, oranges, clementine and fish, fish, fish, fresh or dried. Mangoes 75c per kilo, our bodies as we speak are made up of about 50% mango and we have taken on an orange hue.