Asia 2018: Day #24 Saigon Stopover

Disembarkation from the boat at 8:00am was followed by a 90-minute bus ride through the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City.  Our stay on the boat was finally over and we were a bit sad at that. It had been pretty good overall. The food was great, the boat amenities and staff were excellent and the service overall was not to be faulted. I suppose the only complaint we had was the problem on the first day regarding the cruise kick-off point. Robyn and I had already started discussing the prospect of other river cruises, and decided that if this example was anything to go by then we definitely needed to do more research.

Even though we were headed for our final destination the cruise company still had a couple of excursions lined up for us. The first at the Chinese market at Cholon and then to a lacquer factory.

By the time this was all over I was done. A short taxi ride later and we were at the Majestic Hotel right on the waterfront. Robyn had specifically picked this hotel for its location though even she didn't expect it to be as well-situated as we discovered it to be over the next two days.

We had two things lined up for the next two evening in Saigon, one at a restaurant and one at the Opera House. Both were within 15 minutes' walk of our front door.  A better location would have been hard to find. Added to that the hotel itself was old-style French with a good bar on the roof, a decent pool fully enclosed by the hotel and a big room with a comfortable bed; some of the beds we'd had over the past four weeks had been hard as rocks.

Robyn and I had discovered that Luke Nguyen, the Sydney based chef of Vietnamese heritage, had opened a restaurant in Saigon a year or so ago and we decided that it would make a great final treat for holiday to have a meal there. I had booked while we were on the river boat and luckily enough received a confirmation before the internet packed up. So all looked good, and it turned out to be exactly that. The food was excellent, and washed down with a d'Arenberg white from McLaren Vale, a winery situated about 10 kilometres from my father's house in South Australia.

We skipped the set menu in favour of appetisers and main courses. We were stuffed by the end of it. A quiet walk home and quietly to bed.

Asia 2018: Day #23 Final Day on the Boat

A small launch took us to the Vietnamese town of Sa Dec on the Mekong Delta where we would be visiting another local market. Our guide must have realised by this time that we were all pretty much over the concept of market visits and devised a plan to make the visit a bit more interesting.  He split us into two groups of seven, gave us some small amounts of Vietnamese dong and set us the task of buying four items, the names of which he only provided in Vietnamese. I originally thought this would be a disaster but it turned out really well as each group had to struggle to be understood in their lousy Vietnamese and to bargain for goods at the same time.

About 45 minutes later we got back together and came to the conclusion that each group had purchased a grand total of one item correctly. The major problem had been in our pronunciation. Vietnamese is a very nuanced tonal language with words for very different objects sounding very similar to our Western ears.  The market stall holders and some of the security personnel had a great laugh at our expense. It was good to see that everyone took it all in fun and it made a simple market visit quite memorable.

This was followed immediately by a visit to "The House of the Lover". This house was owned by Huynh Thuy Le who was the Vietnamese lover of Marguerite Duras (French novelist and script-writer) when she was a teenager and he was about 30.

And then another temple, though a slightly different one. Caodaism is a Vietnamese mixture of Hinduism, Buddhism and Catholicism and made for a very colourful temple indeed.

After lunch we visited the small town of Cai Be and a small family owned business that makes rice paper, pop rice and rice candies.

Farewell cocktails and the presentation of the crew marked our last full day on the boat. Saigon in the morning.

Asia 2018: Day #22 Fish Farms and Silk Factories

Now firmly in Vietnam our first stop of the day was to a floating fish farm. The fish here is the Vietnamese Bassa which everyone at home seems intent on not eating. The general view is that the farming methods are not very good and the fish are basically raised in near-raw sewage. That isn't the case here as the water is that of the Mekong. Still not the most pristine of water environments but certainly better than we have been led to believe. Maybe the Bassa raised here on these family run farms is only destined for the local market. I doubt we would get to see any of it in Australia.

Sunrise

Floating fish farm

A short walk then took us through to a mat weaving factory where we were shown how the ever-present rattan mats were woven and coloured.

Rattan weaving

Then, in the cruise company's ever-expanding list of travel options, we were transported to a silk factory by rickshaw. This is the area in Vietnam where they make the famous black silk, made from raw silk dyed some 40-50 times using a dye made from a locally grown fruit. Apparently this fruit only grows in this local area and is rare and therefore very expensive. Hollywood celebrities seem to love it.

Another rickshaw ride back to the boat and lunch, and resting. Later in the afternoon our Vietnamese guide gave us a talk about Vietnam and something about his life. Information such as this is very informative though the fine detail will probably be lost over time the general information goes into the memory banks for use at some time down the track.

Asia 2018: Day #21 Cruising Down the Mekong

As with our Laos trip there has to be one day when all you do is travel from one place to another. For the river cruise this was it.

We departed the Phnom Penh port at about 9:30am and cruised down the Mekong towards the Vietnamese border which we reached at around 3pm. We had been told our passports had been cleared with Vietnamese visas included but we still hadn't seen them. I figured the cruise director would have been in a bit of a panic if we hadn't been able to cross the border successfully. He wasn't and we did.

Preparing to depart

Mekong (right) meets Tonle Sap (left)

So it was a nice lazy day on board watching the river traffic gradually increase once we'd crossed the border. The difference in type and quantity of the traffic was quite marked.

The afternoon was relieved by a visit to the engine room and wheelhouse of the riverboat which broke things up a bit.

Engine room

Wheel house

Otherwise, it was snooze time, and reading time, and time to complain about the wi-fi which had become rather flakey and which was destined to disappear almost completely over the next few days.

Mekong sunset