Can Tho floating market and journey to Chau Doc

Nhung came bouncing up the walkway from the pier this morning while we were finishing up our breakfast on the restaurant deck.  While we finished up, she went in and grabbed a couple of passion fruit and extracted the seeds for us to take home.  She's convinced we can grow them and produce a crop.  Time will tell, as long as we don't get arrested by customs....
The boat was ready and waiting, so down the river we went.  It took about half an hour to reach the market, but there was always something to see.  Here are a couple of examples of the level of physical work that some people go through here.

Unloading boatload of logs, one at a time

Unloading crushed rock, one basket at a time

The Mekong is like a commerce highway here, boatloads of goods travel the river and the market here is one of the distribution methods for the goods.  Farmers supply these boats who sell wholesale style, and supply many of the street markets and roadside stands.  We were there around 8:30 and it was not very busy, apparently the most active time is at or even before sunrise.

Nhung getting some onions for her mother

The flagpoles advertise the product that the boat sells

Pineapple on a stick

Taking off the skin, then it was quartered and we all shared

We boated back to the hotel, checked out, and headed towards Chau Doc.  On the way, we stopped at an ancient house that was owned by a wealthy Chinese man.  A movie called The Lover tells the story of him and a teenage French girl, and was filmed here in Vietnam.  They had some nice garden areas too.

A pretty butterfly

Nhung and Eileen

Our lunch stop was at a crocodile farm, where we were given an impromptu tour of the operation, thanks to Nhung.  The have about 10,000 crocs here.  The incubation success rate is somewhere in the upper 90's whereas it is single digit in the wild.  It was pretty neat to see the animals at their various stages, including some that were only a month old.  Doesn't take too much imagination to guess what we had for lunch either.

Sun bathing

Two months old

Ummm, grilled crocodile

Following lunch, it was about an hour and a half to Chau Doc, where we had to say our sad goodbyes to our driver and Nhung, they had a long drive back to HCMC ahead of them.  We got checked in and stretched our legs with a walk around the area.  There is some nice park areas along the river adjacent to the hotel, and when that ended, the local market was right there.  For such a small town (about 175,000), they sure have a big local market.  We did not come across any restaurants that looked appealing, so we decided to just splurge and head at the hotel, since we have VND left over and I expect we'll get burned at the border when we try to convert the leftovers to US$.  Couple of beer by the pool and a nice dinner downstairs.


The Mekong from our balcony

Tomorrow we hop onto a large speedboat and head upriver to Cambodia, about a 4.5 hour trip, including a border stop nor far from here.  Nothing scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, but I will email Lynda tonight to see what they are doing.  She retired from McArthur a few months ago, and we overlap in our Cambodia destinations.