After checking out,
we got a taxi out to the bus station, which was about five kilometres
outside town – a proper, sleepy, dusty place with stray dogs
wandering about and a few food stalls. We bought our tickets to Can
Tho and climbed aboard the bus – again, a proper local (mini)bus
with tired seats, tired detailing, well, tired everything. As we
drove along, people got on and off, and soon George the bear, Zoe's
cuddly travelling companion, was sharing the back of the bus with a
box of live crabs.
Driving through the
delta, drowsy with the heat, Zoe asleep in my lap, the sights flowed
by...
- Rice, mature here,
paddies filled with heavy nodding heads; patches of stubble;
pale-brown grains spread out to dry, women in bamboo hats shuffling
through the grains to ensure they dried evenly.
- The Mekong in all
its forms: swamps, narrow channels, wide rivers – the water a pale
green-brown, like milky coffee mixed with kale juice.
- Small-scale
aquaculture in front yards, sometimes sitting right up against the
roadside.
- Corrugated-iron
hovels beside wood-and-palm-frond shacks with old bicycle tyres
holding down the fronds on the roof beside multi-storey, freshly
painted houses with fancy columns and verandahs.
- An army of
steamrollers standing idle on a half-made road, seemingly abandoned.
- Glossy-feathered
roosters strutting about inside cages like upturned wire baskets
outside homes and shops.
- A water buffalo
emerging from a wallow in a grassy area beside the road, grey mud
dripping from it. Nearby, several more in a small pond, only the tops
of their heads showing above the water.
- Hammocks, so many
hammocks, more hammocks than I've seen before – whole restaurants
full of them, many occupied by dozing patrons.
- By the roadside
and out among the rice paddies bright, white graves, clustered
together or standing alone.
- Everywhere
commerce – motorbike repair workshops, caves, black with soot and
grease; shops selling fishing nets, floor tiles; stalls selling
pineapples, watermelons, lychees, rambutans, bananas, mushrooms.
- Fields of a
strangle spindly cactus, forced to grow straight upwards to form a
trunk and then allowed to spread out horizontally like tentacles
(more of which later).
- Coconut palms,
coconut palms and more coconut palms.
- Huge, pale Brahman
bulls on the roadside, contentedly chewing the cud, ears flapping
flies away as they watch the traffic go by.
- A big mechanical
digger digging a new channel for the river, as if the world needs
another one.
- Dress shops with
display cases out the front containing ballgowns so fancy that
Cinderella would have worn them to the ball with pride.
We eventually made
it to the bus station in Can Tho, where we set about finding a taxi.
We quickly found a collection of cabs belonging to a firm that had
built a reputation for honesty, but all of the drivers quoted us the
same inflated fare and refused to use their meters. We eventually
became so exasperated that we walked out of the bus station and
across the main road, where we found a young guy in a cab from a
rival firm. He seemed unsure about the whereabouts of our hotel, but
agreed to try to find it for us. As he drove, he pulled out his phone
and started trying to get advice on how to find the hotel. We were
starting to get a bit worried when he did a U-turn and started
driving back the way we had come. But then he stopped, and there,
just ahead, was a sign with the name of our hotel, pointing down an
alley. We paid the driver – about 30% of the price quoted to us at
the bus station – and walked down the alley to the hotel.
After checking in,
we walked out into town. We were felling pretty hungry by then, so we
bought some roast pork to eat as we walked and then stopped at a
funny little barbecue place. It was set up in a large gap between two
buildings – seemingly just a collection of little chairs and tables
and a couple of guys tending some barbecue grills. The staff were
incredibly attentive, quickly furnishing us with menus and even
giving us a plate to put our roast pork on. We ordered some drinks
and chicken wings and beef skewers (at which point we discovered
there was a kitchen out the back somewhere as well) and sat and ate
and drank and played cards.
When we were done we
continued our exploration of Can Tho, eventually reaching the
waterfront, which we wandered along until we reached a small pier.
Here, Kate and the girls were approached by a guy offering to take us
to the nearby floating market. The price he quoted was quite a bit
less than we had earlier read was the going rate, and the boat he
indicated would take us there was quite a bit smaller than the normal
tourist boats, so although we hadn't planned on visiting the markets,
we agreed to meet him at 5am tomorrow for a tour of both the markets
and some of the narrow Mekong channels nearby.
We then did a quick
tour of a little clothing night market (picking up some cute little
summer pyjamas for Zoe) and had some dinner back at the barbecue
restaurant.
And now I just have
to share this with you. It's a little sachet of body wash (I think)
that was provided for us in our hotel room. Please note the goat in
the top right corner, surrounded by a heart, and the torrent of milk
that is pouring down from it and splashing onto the woman's back. Mmmm, can't wait
to try it...
No comments:
Post a Comment