MEKONG DELTA:

We took an overnight group trip to Mekong Delta. There are lots of tour companies in the backpacker area basically offering the same thing, so it was hard to chose or actually see a difference in service. When we asked what the difference was, we always heard the same sentence which should follow us through our whole trip: “same same, but different”. Anyway, we had a good size group with nice people and a pretty funny guide. On the first day we took a boat trip on the main river and some smaller canals, visited a honey farm and a coconut candy “factory”, where the whole process from squeezing the coconut juice up to wrapping the finished candy was done manually.
Unfortunately the rest of the first day did not go quite as expected: one part of our group was only on the 1-day trip and took the bus back to Saigon, whereas we were supposed to join another group and go on another 3 hour bus ride further into the delta. We ended up waiting at “ a beautiful garden” for almost 2 hours in order to be crammed into a mini bus with 14 other people, normally seating 12. The trip took 5 hours instead of 3 as traffic is so slow!
The funny thing was, that when we finally arrived at the hotel pretty much everybody from any other tour company stayed there for the night and left for the exact same itinerary the next day.
The second day was a lot of fun, with hours of cruising through the scenic delta.
The drive back to Saigon was alright and a lot shorter. Although this trip made us realize that Vietnamese people do things differently (very inefficiently at times) and that we as tourists have to learn patience, we can look back on a very fun 2-day trip.