Day Four: Chau Doc to Vinh Long

We woke up at 5am i think. We got to be at the bus station to catch our bus to Vinh Long. The journey took about 3h. The local buses always try to call out and see whoever wants to hop on so they can earn more. By about 1h away fr Chau Doc, my bus is packed. This bus has no AC and some passengers smoke in the bus. Luckily it was very early morning so the air is very fresh and cooling.

From ReidOn Travel.com, I know I need to look for Mekong Travel to get my accommodation, boat tours etc settled.

Mekong Travel

Tel 070-836-252, 0919-002-505; vinhlongmekongtravel@yahoo.com,

No 8, 1 Thang 5 St; open 7am to 8.30pm daily

We asked the bus driver and asked people on the way to find directions to Mekong Travel. After a huge round, we realised its actually very close to the bus station. We just need to cut across the local market. If you can find the river side and see the local ferry terminal, you can see a large alfresco kind of cafe. Mekong Travel is just round the corner and beside it is a small hotel: Van Tram. Opposite Mekong Travel is the older Cuu Long hotel. There's a newer one, also Cuu Long hotel, at the river side.

M and I proceeded to book a 2 day 1 night tour with Mekong Travel for usd $60 (2 pax). Details as follows:

Vinh Long - An Binh Island - Cai Be Floating Market

- potteries & brick kilns, bonsai garden, fruit nursery, biking around villages

- sampans on the small canals

- home stay, make and have dinner with local family. overnight

- breakfast and boat trip to Cai Be floating market

- handicraft village: coconut candy, rice paper, pop rice, sewing coconut-leaves for roof etc.

This is truyen *not sure if i've spelt her name correctly. She is very cheerful and 'playful'. She is a very nice guide and though she's only 6 months into this job, she is very passionate about it.

Vinh Long has several islands and there are many small arch bridges that link them up. Another mode of transport will be by boat on their various waterways and canals. Since we booked a private tour, we have boat to ourselves. Along the way, you can see various big boats transporting fruits, rice, rice husks, bricks, etc etc etc. I liked the tour because i get to see how these people make their earnings and live their lives. The only turn-off is the expensive lunch at a local house. The owners are very clever. They only offer two choices: either the elephant fish or the prawns.. costs us $270,000 dong! frankly it doesn't taste that nice. I prefer my usual rice from Chau Doc.



I did enjoyed the sampan ride on the small canals. Its really very tight. When there's another boat in the same canal, we had to help to push the boat away in order to pass through.

Our homestay place is at Mr Ba Linh's house on An Binh Island. He is an ex-VC soldier.. I think he's 80 year old if i remembered correctly. The whole family are very enthusiastic in having us. Mr Ba Linh does not speak english.. But he'll signalled you to follow him as he show off the nice flowers he grew in his garden and the turtles he kept.

We proceeded to try to cook our dinner with the family =p

We slept very early tonight because there's basically nothing to do after night falls. Also, we are walking up 5am next morning to go to Cai Be floating market, which is an hour boat ride away.

night :)

Some thoughts

I think the agent already took out quite a bit of commision in between, thus drivers like Mr Dong, had to try other ways to increase his income. By trying to persuade us to change venue, he can earn extra because that's outside the itinerary we had paid for. We vaguely mentioned that we are taking the 6am bus to Vinh Long the next day. True enough, he was actually waiting for us outside our hotel the next day morning at 5.15am! By the way, there's a crowd of motorbike drivers trying to vie for business too.

For boat trips to cham village, floating village and even day trips to Sam Mountain etc, we can actually just try to negotiate on the streets. There's many motorbike drivers around. The thing is, they might not speak english. I think we can easily get usd $10 for a day trip to Sam Mountain, Tuc Dup hill.

I have not explored Chau Doc in depth. Only on the last night then I realised where is Hoa Sen Bookstore and Mekong Tours (mentioned in ReidOn Travel.com). alamak. Also, only on the last night, I realised that there's a missing street that I have not stepped foot in! There's also a slightly different village/ countryside that we passed by on the way to Sam Mountain too. If I have the chance to come back to Chau Doc again, I'll explore the countryside more this time, especially the part closer to cambodia border! :)

Hoa Sen Bookstore
Tel 076-867-817; 14 Nguyen Huu Canh St; open 6am to 8pm daily

Mekong Tours
Tel 076-868-222; www.mekongvietnam.com; 14 Nguyen Huu Canh St; open 7am to 8.30pm daily

OH! Must mention about my fav cafe here. Cafe Sam Bo Luong. M and I went twice to sit there to watch traffic and drink coffee and chit chat. Frankly, Chau Doc has the best food and coffee from my entire 8 days trip in Vietnam. As I got closer to HCMC, I missed Chau Doc's food + coffee even more!

Day Three: Chau Doc - mountains day

We set off for our day trip at 7am. The motorbike uncle, Mr Dong, came by and grabbed another motorbike driver off the street to take both M and me on our day trip.

I don't really like to sit on motorbikes back in Singapore. However, this is the most common and easiest and cheapest way of transport here. SO, i begin my day on the bike...

Mr Dong took us to Tuc Dup Hill first. It's actually the furthest from the town centre, about 41km south. I think we took about 1h to get there. Along the way, we stopped to take pictures of rice fields etc. Chau Doc is very near to the cambodian border, thus on the way to Tuc Dup, cambodians occupied this area. There's many cambodian temples and many cambodians own the lands here.

I noticed that Mr Dong is very persistent to ask us to go to another place. Of course, he wants to earn extra. Thus, for every place he stopped (not on my day trip list), i'm kind of worried he'll charge me again later. We have already paid usd $15/ pax for this day trip yesterday at the agent office.

Anyway, Tuc Dup Hill was fun! I liked climbing in and out and weaving between those rocks. hahaha. A bit breathless though. The entrance fee is $8000 dong per pax.

Tuc Dup Hill is also termed at the '$2million dollar' hill as the US army tried to knock out the VC out from this hill during the war. It's a maze of caves, passageways in between the rocks of this hill.

The next stop is Cam Mountain. Paid $7000 dong per pax for the entrance fees. Frankly I know nuts about it. Then the ugly things came.... our dear Mr Dong says our day trip only brings us to Cam Mountain BUT not to the top. We need to take the motorbikes inside Cam Mountain area to go up and thats another $70,000 dong per pax. come on, I sort of expected this but its too expensive. Also, because i had already paid usd $15 per pax upfront, im really quite pissed off to pay another $70,000 dong. We tried to reason with him (esp when his english is limited). In the end, we choose to relax and had a drink at the foot of Cam Mountain and idle our time away till 2.30pm, after which we proceed to Sam Mountain. I wonder if the same thing will happened later.

Well, dear Mr Dong decide to play a good samaritarian. He says he's a good man and he'll bring us up without any extra charge. hahaha. luckily he brought us up. It's a tedious way up to Sam Mountain. The view is good and we had our dinner and coffee while waiting for sunset.

By the way, I got super sun-burnt today.

Day Two: Chau Doc - floating village, cham village

As you walk along the various streets, many cyclo drivers will try to offer to take you to charm village, floating village etc. You can try to bargain with them. We took a boat ride to floating village and cham village with this guy for $80,000 dong for two pax. Think it took around 2hours. We started at around 3.30pm and end at about 5plus.

The floating village looks ok.. I feels like the one at tonle sap (cambodia) is better. Cham village is 'famous' because the malays are staying there. It's like a totally different area of Vietnam. There's a mosque there. And when we were there, two men are giving out money to the kids. Not sure if there's some custom / festival going on. Anyway, we were attracted to those kids shouting and crowding around thus we went to take a look.

Mekong Delta

Arghhh, I should have wrote this first!

But I don't know how to slot this entry in front! *faint*

When you look at the map, Mekong Delta is SO big. In Vietnamese, Mekong means Cuu Long, which means Nine Dragons, as the river branches into nine mouths that empty into the sea.

I printed my Mekong Delta map off ReidOn Travel's website. To travel from HCMC to Ha Tien or Chau Doc in the delta will take up at least half of a day. Thus, we need to plan our route carefully and to decide how much time we want to spend at each place.

After reading through countless blogs online, I thought I'll just concentrate on two or three places in the Mekong Delta. In the end, M and I narrowed down our choices to Chau Doc, Vinh Long and possibly My Tho. It's still considered very ambitious because we do not have a private vehicle. Anyway, we decided to play by ear =P We'll just go wherever the bus can go and sleep wherever we can sleep and makes the best out of it. Sounds super exciting right? I'm super excited the night before that I can't sleep!

Frankly, there's SO many places I've not been to........but do I have to cover everything... after this trip, I think I'll still go back to Chau Doc again if I have the chance and maybe explore a slightly different route...

Day Two: Chau Doc

We slept our fill this morning. The sun rays poured in from the balcony...

Looking out from the balcony, the opposite market is busting with activities.. you can hear frequent horning of the motorbikes, bicycles, etc. I'm glad we started crossing Vietnam roads from the Mekong Delta area, its not as hectic as HCMC! Anyway, after 8 days of experience of crossing roads in Vietnam, I dare say its not as daunting!

M and I explored the local market and hunt for our breakfast. We took our time to walk through the different lanes, occasionally taking pictures, buying stuff. The locals like to smile a lot. Sometimes i just need to point to my cam and smile brightly at them and they'll just nod their head and smile back.

I don't know what to call my breakfast. Its a different kind of texture of rice vermicelli with super-sumptous barbecued pork and their sauce! I love it! Then spring roll made with their rice paper...not sure what's the filling inside, but its delicious too! aww.. I'm missing the food there now :( $40,000 dong easily feeds both of us.. thats like around usd $2.40 only.


We went on to explore the various streets from our hotel and try to walk to the main bus station in Chau Doc. On the way, we took pictures as usual, tried the local snacks/ drinks if they look interesting enough =p This is my kind of holiday! We even went in a cafe/pub for coconut drinks. The place is busting with Vietnamese pop songs, complete with their MV. Interesting...

This is a kind of sweet and sour fish soup, called canh chua. The fish meat is very fresh and the whole pot is full of different kinds of vegetables. Refreshing and unique. They served us in a hotpot, quite big for the two of us.
Anyway, we finally reached the bus station. It's not really a long way. The bus station is about 2-3 km from the town center. We just follow Le Loi road (towards river side) and walk along. Along the way, we passed by many shophouses, a church, and of course the most expensive hotel in Chau Doc: Victoria Chau Doc. We went in to take a peep too :p

We wanted to look for a branch of Mai Linh Bus company because its one of the company with express buses. However, they only have buses running from Chau Doc to Can Tho or to HCMC, with hourly departures. Thus we bought our bus tickets to Vinh Long town (in Vinh Long province) from some other local bus company for $100,000 dong per pax. There's only one bus a day to Vinh Long and it runs at 6am! hahaha. I'll tell you more about my bus ride on another post :p