12th Day (2nd day in the Mekong Delta)

On Thursday we woke up at 7am, had breakfast at 7:30 and were leaving with our promised boat (only for us !!), at 8. First we went to the Unicorn Island (don't ask me why it's called like that!), to eat some nice fruits, walk around and well buy souvenirs etc. (it was all inhabited so it wasn't much of a "nature island"), but still nice, and we bought some traditional Vietnamese hats (you know, the ones worn by the rice field workers!). We looked really asian in those !!

The second island was called the Coconut Island, and indeed there were a lot of coconuts there !! We saw a coconut candy factory, and rode some bikes through the island (which is also inhabited but much more within the nature), and got lost of course - we were supposed to see some rice fields but didn't find them, and then it started to rain, but well it was still very nice. Then we had lunch (some hand wrapped spring rolls like the ones I described to you on the 4th Day) but with a special fish : The elephant ear fish. It is called like that because it looks like an elephant ear, and it was really delicious !!

Our next station was Vinh Long (the second city in the Mekong Delta), but first we would have to ride the boat for more than four hours !! At first it was very nice and relaxing, but after two and a half hours it started raining, and as I said before, when it rains here, it really rains hard !! So quickly we put on our rain coats and tried to protect our backpacks as well as we could, but of course it wasn't enough and so we arrived two hours later at our "hotel", completely wet and cold. I put some quotation marks at the word hotel, because it wasn't really one, or maybe it was one, but not the sort of hotel you would normally imagine. There were some bungalows, all related to each other with some "hallways", and every thing was on stilts, and it was all "open", and underneath it was only water and some water plants. Very interesting and really beautiful I thought !! We were going to sleep in one of the bungalows, and we were the only ones there, apart from the staff (one family I think). We had some nice (cold) showers and then a nice dinner (again, the hand made spring rolls, but I think it's my favourite Vietnamese dish so it wasn't a problem !!), and then we talked through the evening, and went to bed early again.