Can Tho

On November 6th We then continued south from central Vietnam.✈️ Can Tho is the largest city in the Mekong Delta region.

The city is not full of sights, but it is a good starting point for exploring the Mekong Delta.

We were looking for a nice hotel just outside the city. As we rounded the corner in our taxi🚕, our eyes👀 almost popped out of our heads! Around the hotel was a super, mega-chic residential area with large villas!😳 Pompous golden gates decorated the driveway and then we saw it... a yellow Lamborghini!🏎️ Really now???🤦‍♀️ What do you want with a sports car in Vietnam? 🤷‍♀️ You can't drive faster than 70km/h here. The roads are bad plus the chaotic traffic. I do not get it! 🤔

We didn't stay here long.

One day we took a trip to the city because it was pouring rain🌧️ and found a really great indoor playground.

€4 entry fee for all of us. Very clean and tidy.☺️ The kids enjoyed it to the fullest. The play area with a grocery store... and again you notice the difference between the countries: here you can find avocado🥑, mango🥭 and the like. Ball pit, slides🛝, trampolines, climbing area🧗 everything was there.

Played really badly, the children fell into bed late in the evening.😂

The next day we did what we came here to do. We looked for a small boat🛶 and drove through the Mekong for almost 4 hours.

Fascinating, frightening, depressing and beautiful in equal measure. Just as we saw the magnificent villas, right next door there is the absolute opposite... great poverty.

The people here live from and with the Mekong. Some of them live in poor huts without electricity or running, let alone clean, water.

It is washed, cooked or drunk with the Mekong water. Animals from the river or its surroundings, including snakes and rats, are cooked. Accordingly, many families have chronic illnesses. Chronic diarrhea, schistosomiasis (worm disease with inflammation of the lungs, bladder, intestines, liver/spleen).

The water is totally polluted and there is a lot of garbage floating around. The governments (the Mekong crosses 6 countries: China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam) don't really care about nature conservation. It's depressing. Amnesty has been denouncing this for a long time.

On the other hand, the river is beautiful, like a jungle. This makes the land very fertile and rice can be harvested up to three times a year. There are also an incredible number of types of fruit.

By the way, the typical floating markets no longer really exist. Many people say that it is just a tourist scam.

After these impressions we went on November 9th. continue to the small island of Con Dao