We left Chau Doc at 8am and headed to Tra Su Forest, a little southwest of Chau Doc. Here you take a (canoe) boat ride through a flooded mangrove forest where the water is covered with water lettuce, making it appear completely green (it's really very small pieces that create the green carpet). The boat ride was really neat and it seems that not many tourists do this so if you're in the area, definitely stop by here! Here are a few pictures:
There's also a lookout tower where you can see over the entire forest, including all of the white storks that nest in the trees there. No picture of all the storks as we were there mid-day and there weren't very many in the trees at that time. And, yes, it was very hot there, thanks for noticing.
After we finished our forest boat tour, we drove 2 hours towards Can Tho before we stopped at some roadside tourist restaurant for a small and uninspired lunch. This place (no idea what its name is) specialized in crocodile and had maybe 100 of them on the property in cages (sigh). Here's Martin posing next to one of their mascots throughout the restaurant:
After lunch we drove another hour before arriving somewhere on the outskirts of Can Tho. There we rented bikes from a homestay place and then biked around some villages along the river. It was really peaceful; we biked along a narrow path where there were no cars and only 1-2 motorbikes. There were houses all along this path. Here are some action pics of Martin biking that I took. Our guide is in front of him and the biking tour guide is in front of him. We were never short of guides on this trip!
We stopped at one house where they make award-winning rice noodles. You have to come to this house in order to buy them - they don't bring them into the city or anything like that. Martin got to try to make them! He didn't do too badly (his three are on the top in the last pic of this section). You have to make a "hammock-like" pattern with the noodles on a banana leaf. It definitely takes some finesse. Then we got to eat some (pre-made) noodles with some bbq pork. Yum.
After our bike ride, and some post-bike-ride fresh fruit and tea, we finally arrived at our hotel in Can Tho, the Victoria Can Tho. I really loved this hotel, mostly because a) it was the first hotel with a fitness room!, b) it had a nice open-air lobby area, and c) it had the nicest pool for swimming laps that we saw on this trip. Sadly, there was no time for me to enjoy it as we only had one night at this hotel. If we did this trip again, I'd schedule a second night here to enjoy sitting by the pool fully. And yes there are two pools there. :)
That night we took the hotel's shuttle boat down the river into Can Tho for dinner at L'Escale. There you have a view over the river, if you can get a table on that side of the restaurant. The food was good but not as spectacular as other places we'd eaten during the trip. They did have some tofu dishes, which weren't always easy to find at restaurants, so they get a thumbs up from me. It was definitely nice to get into town for the evening (we'd debated just eating at our hotel because we were tired) and this restaurant is not only ranked #1 on tripadvisor in Can Tho but it's also right next to the night market so it's a good choice if you're down there during the evening.
The next morning, we woke up early and went to see the floating market on the river. Here the people go and buy fruit/veg from farmers and then bring it to the river to sell to whoever comes along to buy it - tourists, restaurants, markets, etc. There are maybe 30-40 boats all floating around together. You have to get up early to really see this market - by 9am there are like a million tourist boats at it and it's not authentic anymore. Go at 7am. It's interesting and worth the trip. It doesn't look like much, but each boat is filled with something (there is a stick or two on the front of each boat with what they're selling stuck on top of it so you can tell). There are also smaller boats that go around selling breakfast (noodles) or coffee/drinks for the sellers (or the tourists, as the case may be).
These tourists got some noodle breakfast:
Can you see the veg/fruit stuck on top of sticks on each boat?
After seeing the floating market, it was time for us to head to the newly built Can Tho airport for our flight to Phu Quoc. However on the way to the airport our guide snuck in one last thing - a visit to the oldest house in Can Tho, the Binh Thuy house. It was built in the early 1800s. Not sure it's worth going out of your way for, but it was pretty and it contains some nice antique furniture.
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