Can Tho - Ho Chi Minh City

Hmm...where are the goods?
Awoken at six in the morn by a ra-ta-tat of loud knocks on my door.

Bleary eyed, with a dry throat and a minor hangover, I opened the door to an empty landing. A practical joker or a supernatural visitor?

Neither. It was our enthusiastic tour guide rousing everyone in time for the floating market on the river. We breakfasted on fresh fruit, still rubbing the sleep from our eyes, and then got taken to a boat. Sitting on a hard bench, feeling the wind whip through the vessel, and listening to the wash lap against the hull I realized that perhaps I'd got carried away with the heat of South East Asia.

It was freezing.

Not literally, of course. But temperature's all relative, and in my safari shorts and skimpy T-shirt at seven o'clock in the morning out in the middle of one of the Mekong Delta's widest channels I was shaking like an Parkinson's sufferer drying a polaroid.

The floating market didn't help ignore the cold either. A sorry flotilla of trading boats greatly outnumbered by crafts packed full of tourists looking equally shell-shocked as ourselves. The produce available to buy was limited and there was little in the way of commerce happening.

I was trying to catch the Vietnamese equivalent of "Alright, darling. Fancy a pound of my plums. Oy oy!", but the only people buying appeared to be the tourists who were addressed in broken English. I think I bought some bananas and glumly ate the first one while willing the energy to warm-up my goosepimpled arms.

The cynic in me thinks the whole market is staged for the tourists -- or maybe there is a real one, but it only happens once a week and we got the wrong day...

A 5km hike through the Mekong Delta jungle turned out to be a walk down a paved path running next to some local's homes, and we ate a traditional Vietnamese lunch packed tighter than the dancefloor in your favourite club. Perhaps that was the traditional aspect.

You're probably getting the impression I didn't enjoy this two-day tour around the Mekong Delta. That's not quite true. I made some friends, learnt something about Vietnamese life, and did some great work on my tan. I just think I might've had more interesting, authentic experiences if I'd made my own tour of the area. I wonder what drives these kinds of package tours. Is it genuine tourist demand? Or is it perceived demand by the tour operators?

The roads back to HCMC were chocka block with traffic from everyone heading to the city after Tet. This made the drive more scary than usual, especially as the guide cheerfully told us how many people are killed on the roads over this period. Perhaps the four-lane system where the middle two lanes are optional for either direction of traffic should be reviewed....overtaking in the third land while someone heading the other way has the same idea for the same stretch of tarmac certainly adds a buzz to the ride.

Back in the city I popped out for a 100% bona fide Vietnamese dining experience and found it on a street corner near to Miss Loi's: a steaming bowl of phó -- a thin soup of long rice noodles with fresh vegetables and meat or seafood -- served by a surly young man. In the dark street I sat on the kerb, slurping my soup, coughing from the spice and the pollution, and thinking how grand it was. Grinning like a fool I passed back the bowl and spoon to the young man and skipped back to the guest house.

I had the runs within six hours.