Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta, Vietnam

My first impression of Ho Chi Minh City was the vastness. The night train had chugged along for miles through urban sprawl. I arrived in the backpackers area of De Tham and started looking for somewhere to stay. I began to get worried when all the budget hotels were full but a moto driver found me a cheap room in a private house. It’s been really interesting staying with a family who spend the majority of the day cooking food in big pots to sell on the side of the street.

Yesterday I took a tour of the Mekong Delta, which was dissapointing as we spent too long on islands with souvenir stalls and not enough of seeing local life along the river. However it was still a good way to spend time away from the suffocatingly noisy city of Ho Chi Minh. I spent a while getting to know some Japanesse girls and a Khmer family who shared a custard apple with me. The Delta is full of unusal fruit.

For the final part of the tour we took a small wooden boat and weaved our way through narrow parts of the Delta, covered with leafy archways. There were some beautiful butterflies too.

I arrived back in time to find the New Year celebrations were just beginning, as various manned dragons paraded up and down the street, dancing in time to the tribal beat of a drum. The atmosphere was electric as locals and tourists a like were out to have a good time.

The pavements were lined with colourful food stalls and street vendors. Not long after sitting down I was joined by a group of British travellers. We all got on well, so we decided to head off to a top Vietnamesse night club, Apocalpse Now. The bar was adorned with red silk lanterns, the dancefloor packed with a friendly crowd and there was even a tropical garden area serving food. It was a brilliant night with the usual count down to midnight where baloons filled with sparkly streamers were released and lots of happy faces beamed. A raffle followed with a top prize of a refridgerator which we found slightly strange, and pitied the poor girl from Bangkok who had to contemplate getting her new prize home. By three am things were winding down and we finished the night off with a basket of chips at the indoor garden. As places go, Ho Chi Minh City has been a surprisingly happening place to spend New Year.