Can Tho, Vietnam: 27th October 09

This morning we had a lie-in followed by a 3 hour bus ride to Can Tho, the biggest city in the Mekong Delta. We were joined on the journey by Uc, a 49 year old chap whose house we would be staying at – we’d arranged a homestay through the hotel in Chau Doc. We’ve only done one homestay previously, in Malawi, which was an amazing experience, but didn’t really know what to expect from this one – turns out it was cool! Despite the fact that Uc could barely speak a word of English, we just about managed to communicate.

We arrived at Uc's home, in the middle of the delta mid-afternoon. The house was full with Uc’s family – 9 adults and 4 kids, so we were put in a hut at the back of the garden. I say garden, but actually it was an orchard – he calls it the Cai San Orchard, and it’s beautiful – full of Banana, Melon, Lime, Lemon and Orange trees, cris-crossed with streams and bridges and little pagodas to sit, not to mention the pet snake, pet crocodile and flock of ducks!


Once we’d dumped our stuff he took us around the surrounding area on bikes – we crossed dozens of bridges winding our way through the delta backwaters. Everyone who saw us stopped and waved as they don’t get many tourists in this particular area. We stopped for refreshments at a river side stall – a pint each of freshly squeezed sugar cane juice – the lady ran the canes through a sort of mangle and out came the juice, really tasty!

After the bike ride we sat on the veranda of our hut and had dinner – rice paper rolls with fish and noodles, spring rolls, pork and tofu – a real feast which we couldn’t manage to finish. This was followed by a brief walk around the neighboring night market. On the way back we were shown around the house and tried some of the rice wine, some fermented with banana and the other fermented with…snake. Then we sat back in the orchard and spent an hour trying to converse with Uc – mainly pointing at phrases in the guidebook such as ‘I don’t speak much English’ and ‘I don’t speak much Vietnamese’! We resorted to showing him photos in the end!

At about 9pm Matt and I were both fairly tired so suggested that we turn in, but he said ‘no, eat’. We were still stuffed from our massive dinner, but he led us back to his house where we sat on the floor in an out building with his son and three sons-in-law and ate another meal!

This time the meal was a tad bizarre, consisting of Chicken entrail broth and boiled chicken. The broth contained all sorts of weird things, not just the livers and kidneys, but some curly bits too – I think intestine. I managed to eat liver and the broth itself but prayed to god I wouldn’t get any curly bits!

The boiled chicken was freaky to say the least. We just didn’t ‘get’ it! It seemed to be bits of bone with very little meat on, and really rubbery thick skin, which we were expected to suck off. Delicious it wasn’t! But we didn’t want to lose face so slowly sucked the bones. Hmmmm. It was good fun though – they’d brought some beers out and approximately every 30 seconds would chink the bottles together and swig a load down. It was a really good experience. Despite the fact we couldn’t actually speak to any of the 5 men we were with, we did feel a sense of camaraderie!