11th Day (1st day in the Mekong Delta!)

Wednesday, as planned, the three of us met at Ben Thanh Market, where we took a taxi to the bus station we believed was the right one to bring us to one of the "cities" in the Mekong Delta, My Tho. At that station we took a bus that took us to the other important bus station in HCMC, where the actual bus was going to take us to My Tho (we didn't know that ...). The funny thing is that once we were out of the first bus, a lot of people told us we had to go in a bus just in front of ours, so we went there, and they wanted to make us pay 300'000 Dong each, but I thought "how do they know where we want to go ??", so then we went off and found the real bus, where we only had to pay 30'000 Dong each, which is about one euro, instead of 10 !!

We finally arrived in My Tho one and a half hours later, and took some motorbike taxis who were supposed to bring us to the center, bus they brought us to a hotel (maybe they were paid to bring us to that hotel), but well it was nice so we checked in there (for not even three euros each), and had a nice lunch. Then we rested a bit in our room (Carlijn had a strong headache) and at around 6pm we went out to see the town a little, and we found a "tourist" agent guy, who was very friendly so we listened to what he proposed to us for a two days trip, and it all sounded very nice but at the end, when it was time to talk money, he wanted 1'600'000 Dong each !! (That's about 80 USD). So there was no way we would pay so much, even if the meals and the hotel were included. And I must say, I'm very proud of my bargaining skills (mostly acquired by watching my father do it, danke Papi !!), and at the end we payed 1 million each, which is a bit more than 30 euros, and I think he wouldn't have made us pay less so it's all right. At night we had a nice supper in a boat restaurant, and then went to bed early - Melannie was really happy to finally sleep on a real mattress !! - because there were a lot of things waiting for us on the next day !!