The reason, why I went to Can Tho, is that it is famous for it’s floating markets. I arrived in the late afternoon and before I even finished checking into my guesthouse, a guy tried to sell me his floating markets tour. He was a nice guy, but it sounded all a bit expensive, so I told him I had to think about it and I would get back to him later. I thought I would probably find a cheaper offer, if I ask someone with a boat directly… So I started walking into the direction of the river, but made a stop first at the market street and got some food. A soup to be exactly. It’s called Pho and you can get it all over Vietnam. It’s not too bad, but I don’t have to have it all the time…

After that I walked along the river, where I got approached by this woman, who told me she had a boat etc. and if I wanted to go to the floating markets… I haggled a bit with her and got the price down a bit. It was still a bit expensive, but about 5$ cheaper than what the guy in the guesthouse had offered me. We agreed to meet at 5 in the morning at the pear.

I decided to go to a nearby bar and have a beer before I would call it an early night. As I was sitting there with my beer, a guy came in, ordered a beer, saw me and sat right next to me. It took me a second, but then I realized that it was the guy from the guesthouse. He was like: My sister just called me, you ordered a boat trip from her? Small world. We had a nice talk and another beer, for which he paid for and he said I would get picked up at the guesthouse in the morning… (As it turned out, neither he nor his sister picked me up, but his brother)

Anyway, we took off as the sun was just rising and cruised along the river for a while, until we reached the first floating market. It’s basically a ton of smaller and bigger ships selling various stuff. Mostly fruits and vegetables. If you want something, you just dock onto that boat and buy whatever you want. My guy steered me through all the boats, while I took my pictures. It was interesting to see, especially the bigger boats, as the people seemed to live on these…

After a while he said we would go to another floating market, a bit further away. He took the “scenic route” and drove me through these small canals. Really cool!

The second floating market was a bit smaller and had mainly smaller boats, but less tourists, as most of the bigger tours don’t go here. We docked onto one of the boats and bought a few water melons. There are really small here, like the size of a handball…

After about one hour he drove back in the direction we came from. I thought the tour was finished and he would bring me back home, but at some point he turned right into a smaller side arm of the river. He then stopped at a small peer and told me to get off the boat. He brought me to this small place where apparently his brother was having a party. I still have no idea what kind of party it was, but I think it was something like a bachelor party, as it was only men. Anyway, they invited me to join them and gave me a beer and some of the best Vietnamese food I’ve had in my whole time there.

It was really delicious. All kind of different meat and some bread. No side dishes like rice or noodles. Just meat. Perfect! And lots and lots of beer. Every 5 minutes someone came and demanded to finish the class (-> ex). While I like drinking, this was a bit too much for me, as this was my first meal of the day and so much beer in so little time so early in the day was quite exhausting. After all it was about 11 o’clock in the morning!

They started singing karaoke and dancing around. They wanted me to sing too, but that’s not really my thing! And to be honest, I don’t even know the full lyrics of ONE song!!!

After a while I told them, that I might be time to go, as I wanted to go to Saigon in the afternoon, but they wanted me to spend the day with them. It would have probably beeen really funny, but as the drinking speed was a bit too fast for me and I had already checked out of the guesthouse, I declined. The brother was kind enough to drive me back to the hostel with his motorbike, to pick up my backpack, and then to the bus station.

While the floating markets were interesting, but nothing too exciting, the party with the locals was definitely a nice experience!

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