Chau Doc is a small city in the Mekong Delta, famous for it’s floating village and a mountain nearby. I arrived shortly after lunch time, so the first thing I did, was to get something to eat. Afterwards I packed my dirty cloth together and went looking for a laundry service outside of the hotel, as their service was to expensive for me. So, there I was, walking through the streets with my bag of dirty cloth, when a guy came and tried to talk me into talking a boat trip with him to the floating village. I told him I had to find a laundry place first. It took him a while to understand what I wanted, as he barely spoke English. Once he got it, he said he knew someone. I was a bit suspicious at first, as he brought me to his boat anyway, but then he started yelling something over the river. At at the same time we started, another small boat with two women on board started into the river. We met on the another side at a few houses and I handed my laundry over to the two women. The guy told me in sign language, that they were going to wash the cloth in the river and that I could pick them up at 5 o’clock. Why not…

Afterwards they rowed me through the floating village, which is, as the name says, a bunch of houses floating on the river. Many of the houses have a fish farm underneath it.

There was also an old lady on a boat selling noodles. The second Vietnamese guy on my boat called her and ordered two portions of noodles for him. They looked really delicious and he wanted me to buy some too. I would have, if I wouldn’t have known, that the woman is washing the plates and stuff in the river, which might not be toooo good for my stomach…

After he finished eating, we visited one of the fish farms. Apparently they are up to 6m deep and are right under the floating house. The owner also invited me, to take a look into the house. It was very functional, not much furniture etc.

The next stop was a small peer, where they dropped me off to visit a nearby mosque and some souvenir shops. Not really interesting, but it’s included in every tour in Asia.

When they brought me back, I visited the marked and got some cheap food and fruits. The fresh fruits are really one of the best things in Vietnam. You can buy 1kg of Rambutans for about 70 cents or 1kg of Leeches for 1-2€!!! And they are really delicious…

On the next day I went to Sam Mountain. I took the motorbike all the way to the top, as I didn’t want to walk up in the heat. I then told the driver to pick me up at the bottom again. From the top I had a nice few of the vietnamese and cambodian countryside. On the way down, there were a lot of small temples and stuff, which I more or less skipped, as they were nothing special at all.

After all, the mountain wasn’t that good and I was done with it pretty fast. So I decided to leave to Can Tho on the same day. I packed my stuff and walked through the streets to find a motobike driver, that could bring me to the bus station. I found one quickly, as they are  waiting on every street corner, told him that I wanted to go the bus station and he said OK. While he was driving, I was thinking to myself: Hmm, this way looks really familiar! And bam, he dropped me right of at the bottom of Sam Mountain. I asked him, where the bus station was and he pointed to the mountain. Ooookeeey. As it turned out, he didn’t speak any English at all, at he probably must have thought, hey he’s a tourist, so I bring him to the only tourist attraction nearby. Not very clever, as my huge backpack might have been a good hint, that I’m not gonna walk up a mountain. So I tried to explain to him, that I wanted to go to the bus station and not to the mountain, but he didn’t get it all. He then brought me to a nearby hotel, where the woman at the reception spoke a little english. I told her I wanted to go to the bus station and she just said: No! Aha. I tried several times: Bus…to Can Tho…Where is the bus station…etc. Luckily at that moment a mini bus turned up in front of the hotel and my motobike driver combined me saying Can Tho and the minibus outside having a sign saying Can Tho, and shoved me outside and pointed to the van. Not what I had in mind, as the mini bus is a bit more expensive that a big local bus, but I gave in and hopped into the bus…better than nothing.

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