Hello out there.
It is now over a week that we have been traveling the world and we love it. We get so many impressions, smells and meet a lot of friendly people. Its true: you get a smile from everybody on every corner. Mostly its an “Hello” included too.
We left Vung Tau on Thursday with the Russian express boat to go to My Tho via HCMC, known as the gateway to the Mekong area. It was not meant to be a long trip but due to local buses, non-english speaking taxi driver who “knows the way” and lotsa traffic we ended up on the road for 8h. Puuhhh. We spend the night at a little hotel close to the river and decided at dinner to leave early morning for the village Cai Be, known for the oldest floating market in the area.
Although the friendly Motorbike-Boat-Renting-Mekong-River-Tours-Guy said there is no bus going to Cai Be we found ourselves the next day sitting in the back seats of a local bus heading there. We must have had the best seats in that bus, because we would not have loved to stand 2h in the middle of approximately 30 pupils as this bus had just 25 seats and school was out right after we entered. Even on a ride like this you see unimaginable things compared to back home. A woman with a baby had no seat so she just handed her girl over to an old stranger to have the baby seated on his knees. A few minutes later the kid slept almost sucking the mans thumb ;-)
In the centre of Cai Be we met Huong. She is running the CB tourist office and we immediately trusted her and the way she offered us her service. There are no B&B, Hotels or Guesthouses in CB but something they call Homestay. Nothing special about this actually but staying at a local families house. Maybe like people back home are renting out rooms and apartments for guests. She brought us to her “Sister” by motorbike separately and it was beautiful. A very big room just above the floating market and super clean. A very nice and friendly woman too, no English though, so unfortunately no big conversation after Huong left.
Time for a photowalk.