Cai Rang Market
Today was great and it compensated for yesterday. Not that yesterday was bad but it was not my style, too relaxing and less involving. All day eating, biking and admiring palm trees, maybe sounds good by not for me. In any case the Mekong Delta, that in my imagination looked something like in “Apocalypse Now” is completely different. The Americans never bombed here because it was super populated and it still is, Cantho being a huge city, with university and such. It is not by any means the tranquil and isolated place that was in my imagination.
I left in the morning from my hotel after I fought last night with the guy from reception because he wanted to overcharge me for the AC. I went to see the sunrise, but not a clear one,and a lot of action on the Mekong at that hour. At 7:15am we got into the boat and we arrived at the Cai Rang floating market at 7:45am. Great market! Full of boats and great commotion around them. They put us on a small boat to go through all the anchored boats and after that we took a panoramic view from the top of the large boat we were in. Great footage!. There are hundreds of boats in a market that aggregate every morning of the entire year, with the exception of 3-4 days during Tet festival. Everybody buys ans sells and there are no souvenirs or any kitschy stuff, just veggies and lots of fruits. What they sell is displayed on top of a bamboo stick planted on top of the boat. The boats are mainly motorized and large, but there are also standing row boats. Very nice and interesting! We stayed there for about 2 hours, I guess, and latter we went again on the canals to a rice mill where they explained how the rice is getting cropped and refined. We returned for lunch in Cantho where I chat with an Aussie, Ralph, teaching English in Cantho for a number of years already, and with a guy from Paris studying law here for one year. Also, on the boat I chat with two guys from Berlin, one of them is a project manager for Daimeler-Chrysler in Stuttgart and they told me lots of stories about the brands and the emergent possibility of a split between them. Yesterday I met two couple from France, one being the typical French, and a Kiwi girl named Rachel, speaking with British accent. The bad part is after lunch nothing more happened and we took boats and buses and arrive in Saigon at 7:30pm after about 5 hours in the combinations.
The traffic on the outside roads is very intense and they drive slow being afraid of the police, the fines for speeding being very high for the income, the vicinity of $50-100. When I got back, I called home, I went to my hotel where the lady held my luggage, got back in my room, and I made my arrangements for the bus to go North. I need for the first leg a bus that leaves later in the day and I found two agencies that have some and even more so I will go with either of them, most of them having just a morning bus to Dalat per day. The plan is to visit Saigon’s center tomorrow and to leave around 3:00pm to Dalat, a 5 hours ride. After all these, I left again in the center, where it was an amazing Chinese festival with lots of lights and music, in front of the Independence Palace, the old residence of the president of South Vietnam. Pretty active! I walked near the palace that I want to visit tomorrow and to the American Embassy now Consulate, the famously infamous one, that Americans razed it completely after reestablishing new relations with Vietnam and built it fresh. But you cannot see anything inside, the fence being too high. It is impressive how the center looks, new large hotels, chic bars and restaurants, all these being built and developed since 1984 when Vietnam opened for investments. People look happy and extremely friendly. The Commies failed in their known style bringing the country to famine and changed gear meanwhile filing their own pockets to the elbow. I ate somewhere outside in the market some Thai clams with Saigon beer and got back in the backpackers ghetto for the internet nightly activity.
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