We were going to just bowl along to the bus station and buy a ticket to Can Tho, but the hotel booked it for us and arranged a taxi for us to get there. Probably a good idea as no one spoke a scrap of English. We had about an hour to wait at the bus station, it was in the middle of an area full of metal workers and car/bike parts shops and Richard and the kids went for a wander to explore while I stayed with the bags. We were the only tourists in the area, I don't think many tourists take the local buses.
The bus ride was a few hours, but there was really interesting scenery out of the windows all the way. I wasn't able to take photos really, but a notable thing in this part of the country was the graves on family farms, with rice paddies all around. At one point we stopped in a sort of petrol station road side stop place, used the loo (1000D) and bought some snacks which cost very little. All communication was done by hand signals as we didn't speak much more than hello and they didn't speak english.
We had intended to go into Can Tho when we got to the bus station, but we all found it a little overwhelming and didn't really know where we were going. So, in the end we got a taxi directly to our accommodation at Nguyen Shack. It was in the middle of nowhere and the taxi driver had to ring to get directions to find it. Arriving at the shack and walking down dirt tracks to get to it (after our bags had been loaded on the motorbike so we didn't have to worry about them) was such a change of pace from the bustling cities where we had been, I think we all breathed a huge sigh of relief.
We spent the rest of the day at the Shack, relaxing, playing board games, chatting to our hosts and watching the world go by on the little Mekong tributary in front of us. The down time did us all the world of good.
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| This is the main communal area from the outside. |
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Relaxing in the main area of the shack, playing games and eating awesome food!
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| Mia made friends with Bacon the pig. There were also two resident dogs and a cat. |
I'm not entirely sure a person used to a 5 star hotel would like it much here. There were no windows or doors. The bathroom door was a shower curtain. But we just loved it, it looked out over a very quiet tributary of the Mekong and we were able to sit and watch life go by. The lack of windows meant that the breeze moved through, and when we got hit by a tropical storm on the second night, it was quite the experience!
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| No shoes in the room. |
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| The kids relaxing in the hammocks. Mia slept in one on the second night until a large tropical storm necessitated us closing the blinds. |
Nguyen Shack hosts run 3 different guided tours, we did the evening Mekong tour the first day, the floating market and bike tour the second day. I don't have any photos of the bike tour, but it was all through the local village and excellent. The floating market tour will be in another post.
Here are some pics from the evening tour. You can click on the first one, and it will take you to a larger version of photos you can scroll through.
Yep, it rained.
All the boats on the Mekong are painted with these eyes.
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