Our night on the Mekong

Tonight we stopped by at an ancient house for dinner.... As you do! The lady we met owns it with her sister and it has been passed down the family. If this house was in England it would be listed and seen as a national treasure, but unfortunately it's a bit tatty round the edges and some bits are in a bad way, but the overall impressiveness and quality of the craftsmen ship in the carvings still remains. And the 200 year old bonsai tree was impressive too.









The food was good, we had Ginger Chicken, Mushroom Soup, Fried Chicken with Pineapple, Fried Pumpkin flowers and vegetable rice... If your thinking it sounds like a lot, you should have tried eating enough of it so as not to seem rude. I'm getting quite handy with chopsticks though, and Gem has started ditching her fork and picking the sticks up too.
We returned to the boat where we sat out on the front deck for a while before going to bed, it was quite early but we were shattered and had a 5am start. In the night the heavens opened and you seriously cannot say that you have seen rain until you have seen Monsoon rain, it sounded like it was coming down that hard the roof was going to cave in.

The engines started at 5am and we had a bit of a snooze as we chugged down the river, then got up and got ready, having a shower while the boat was moving around was a challenge! Then we had breakfast of a perfectly cooked omelette, ham, bread and jam, yoghurt and watermelon as we headed into a floating market. We were taken off onto a rowing boat to paddle through the market and get up close and personal with the market traders.... You don't get this on one of those cheap day tour boat trips.

And then unfortunately it was time to leave, we wrote in Lan's guest book.... Ooh before I forget, Lan is a collector of memories, people who have been on the boat have sent him things through the years the most essential of which has been the BBC English dictionary which he has used to teach himself to speak English, he keeps everything including the envelopes and packaging that the parcels arrive in. I think we will send him something when we get home.....
So that is the end of our Mekong experience, a bloomin brilliant one it was too, and if we haven't already said it, a huge thank you to Eileen and Roy for making this possible, you have no idea just how much we enjoyed it.

Location:Mekong Delta