Vietnam, Mekong delta and Ho Chi Minh City

The reason that I haven't written in a while now is that I've been travelling around on the Mekong delta for a couple of days now. From Phnom Penh I took a boat trip to the Vietnam side of the border, to the town Chau Doc where my plan was to figure out what to do and probably get to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) as quickly as possible. As usual my plans changed during the course and I ended up taking a three-day tour from Chau Doc on the Mekong delta together with a Swiss girl named Bettina. We've had a great time traveling on the Mekong delta, seeing how the people live on and close by the huge river, how they make a living out of fishing, sarong making, coconut candy and much more. We also stayed at a "homestay", i.e. stayed with a local family for one night. That was a pleasant evening, we were four people sleeping in their living room (although they had some bungalows as well for other tourists, so it didn't feel THAT genuine really). But it has been three really interesting days and lots of nice views over the river and the rice fields.

Some of the things that I've seen and experienced during these days are:
Slowly floating down the Mekong river in a wooden boat on our way to the Vietnamese border - see my PicasaWeb for pictures.
The stilted houses and the floating houses surrounding the river and the canals in Vietnam - always ready for flooding.
Fishing boats and fishing with electricity.
The huge rice fields in the sunset with a view over the Cambodian border.
Sun rising over the emerald-green rice fields, with the morning mist still lingering among the trees.
The bus ride from Chau Doc (roughly 160.000 inhabitants) to Can Tho (roughly 2 million) takes a couple of hours and the small road (still being the main road of southern Vietnam) is always filled with motorbikes, bikes and trucks and never once is the rows of houses and shops replaced by some "real countryside". I wonder if there is still some countryside in Vietnam - a small country with 100 million inhabitants.

I managaed to upload almost all of my photos here in Saigon, so now there's much more to see then before! Enjoy! picasaweb.google.com/anders.ivarsson/Asien is the address.