Can Tho Homestay

June 3 and early morning June 4

10:30pm Vietnam time (which is the same as Thailand, and Cambodian time)

After having Elisabeth as a roommate on the Delhi to Kathmandu trip, I feel really anal about all the meeting times. Like I always want to be there 5 or 10 minutes early. I never know if I should wait for April or if I should just go down when I'm ready. She cuts it really close and so I have started just going down without her. Today the 2 of us were the last ones. She was eating her breakfast and having coffee in the room. When I got downstairs everyone was already on the bus! I need to be earlier ha. I hate making people wait.

Today is the day we head to Vietnam. We left at 7am on a private bus. We drove 4 hours in Cambodia. I blogged. Surprise! We had a stop half way at a Cambodian gas station to use up our Cambodian money.

At the border, we got out of the bus, and walked across with our bags. First, we had to get a stamp from the Cambodian departure immigration. They took our departure card as well.

Then, we had to walk for a bit into Vietnam. All the other border crossings have had archways saying you are now leaving this country and you are now entering this one. There was none of that. It was literally some huts with a bathroom on one side of the road (they tried to charge us money for them but I had left my bag with the group to watch while I went). The other side had a small office we all go our stamps. There were roosters and chickens and chicks running around. As we were leaving Cambodia some guards checked our stamp.

We then walked a little bit further to another side office. Here, we got our Vietnamese arrival stamps. We had to have our Vietnam visas ahead of time so it just took about 15 minutes for them to stamp the passports and get the paperwork they needed. I kept my bag on while this was happening. People were concerned and kept telling me well be here for a while just put it down. I have held the bag for longer. And I would rather just hold it because its still kind of difficult to get on and off.

We got our passports back and walked into Vietnam. On both sides of the border there were those rails that the bar goes up and down to let people in like at parking garages. But we just walked on the side of them. This is where the guards were on both ends. We had our Vietnamese stamp checked and then boarded the bus which was maybe 20 feet from the border crossing. It was very convenient. It also sucked because we had been in the air conditioned bus all day and it was hot as balls. I was sweating within the first few seconds I was outside the bus. It was a pretty quick border crossing though so I can't complain too much. I think it took the least amount of time of all of them so far. Maybe 30 minutes total?

The scenery between countries was drastically different within the first few minutes. Cambodia was very green and flat. Vietnam was very mountainous and tropical looking.

When we first drove in it seemed jungle like. Then it kind of reminded me of India because there were dirt roads and there was a moat between the houses and the road. They had built longer bridges over to join the sides. I'm not sure if during monsoon it is really full of water or not... Probably ha. The moat was way deeper and larger than in India as well. There was also trash piles and scattered garbage on the side d the road. Definitely not as much as in India or Nepal though. The houses were also all really nice looking on the inside. They looked similar to the Cambodian houses. Kind of shed or shack like. On stilts. But nicer quality/better looking than in Cambodia.

Driving past you could also see a lot of the floating villages. At some point we have a chance to explore these and I think it will be really cool so I am excited for that.

After about 45 minutes we got off the bus for a quick stop. We got money out of the ATM. $1 is 20,000 dong... My brain won't be good at this math either. 2 million dong is $100. I really want to get a hold of a 1 million bill at one point. Just to take a picture with so I can feel like a millionaire! Their money is colorful and has a little opening with a window like plastic covering. It's pretty cool. Apparently Australian money is like this as well and they actually make the Vietnamese money for Vietnam because they have the technology to do so.

When I withdrew from the ATM (max is 2 million) I got four 50,000 bills. Luckily, we were at a bank and they easily changed it up for us. I was given twenty 100,000 bills.

Matt then took us to the market real quick. There is some weird stuff here. I can't even explain what things in the market may have been. I literally can't even describe them. Totally foreign looking. We found fruit and Matt identified the names for us.

It was $1 per kilo. I bought a kilo of rambutans which are the fuzzy/spiky looking red and green fruit. It is in the lychee family and Matt said they're his favorite. They are very similar but I think I like the lychees better. You have to peel the skin off. I think I already described the lychees when I was in the elephant park so I won't describe it again.

I shared half of mine with Kristen and she gave me half of her lychees. Mmm so tasty. The rambutan is basically the same as the lychee but I think it is less sweet. The seed in the middle is also a little different. It is smaller and almond shaped. (Still pretty large though. Maybe it's thinner). It has a white covering around it that kind of sticks to the fruit part. That part I have been eating and its kind of woody tasting. They're still good but not as good as the lychees in my opinion. I also tried a mangosteen. April let me taste some of hers. It is purple on the outside with little green stem areas/leaves. It is very sweet. I will need to get some and try it again because I didn't have enough to be able to explain how it tasted exactly.

Things in Vietnam seem more advanced. Maybe similar to Thailand, but I'm not sure yet. Definitely more technology than Cambodia. Literally the land here is just forested and it seems like they just took out trees in the areas they needed to build things. There are more hammocks here than there were in Cambodia.

We boarded the bus again and drove 2 hours to our home stay in Can Tho. When we arrived, our host was waiting for us on the road with the g adventures sign. We got off the bus and hiked our bags on our backs and followed him down a little dirt path. On one side there was a field and the other had trees and some brick buildings. The field was huge. There were rows and rows of mud areas with plants growing from them and little moats in between the rows. (The next morning the moats were filled with water).

We continued walking down a small path that led into bridge and we crossed into a village. There were pretty nice houses and some people standing around. There were a ton of roosters all over the place. Obviously making a lot of ruckus all the time. The rooster cock-a-doodle-dooing in the morning is a lie. They do it constantly (as my family and I found out in Hawaii).

We had an hour or two to get situated. The village has built an area for foreigners to stay. We don't actually stay in the homes with them. There is a building that has a bunch of beds with clean bedding and a mosquito net supplied. The bed was actually pretty comfy. There were some single rooms and some rooms with 4 or 2 beds. They had electricity because they use a generator. No plugs or anything. Matt told us to definitely wear bug spray here. There were lots of chickens and turkeys as well. The turkeys were huge! There were geckos all over the place. In Ed's room he had a huge spider and gecko.

We played card games for a while. It was Ashleigh, Liz, Imad, Mars, April, and I. We taught them how to play B.S. Liz loved it. April was hilarious. She didn't get it at first and kept saying she didn't have any of what she needed to put down and then she was wing funny about faces and looking really depressed to try to have a poker face. We all laughed a lot.

Then Matt taught us how to play Vietnamese poker. It was actually pretty fun. I don't play poker regularly enough... Or really ever... At home to be able to say if its similar or not. It's called "Koi" but pronounced "goy".

Here is how you play:
You use a full deck.
2 is the highest card.
3 is the lowest card.
From highest to lowest trump it goes hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades.
The person with the 3 of spades starts. This is the lowest card of the deck.
You deal all the cards. The best is to play with 4 people. However, you can play with 5 people or deal for 4 and play with 3 people.
You can play runs, doubles, singles, triples, 2 triples, etc. color doesn't matter and trump only matters for playing the same number card and for ending the hand.
You have to go in order from 3 up through. 2. So if I played a 5, no one could play a 3 or 4.
Whatever is led has to be followed. So I'd I am leading and I play a triple, everyone else can only play a triple. You can't play a quadruple to beat it.
If you can't play you can pass. But during a hand, once you pass you can't play again until that hand is over.
Whoever plays the highest card and wins the hand then leads the next hand.

We got to watch the women make dinner for us. They cooked in like broken flower pots basically with a large wok. They put a spoonful of egg and spread it out so its really thin. Then they put some pork and bean sprouts maybe and some other things in it. It is served like an omelet folded in half. There were spring rolls, green beans, shrimp bread (like a really light and crumbly, but thicker tortilla), pork, some fried tofu, and cooked pumpkin. We also had fresh pineapple and bananas. The bananas are green but they're so ripe! It was crazy. I always thought ripe bananas were supposed to be yellow. The food was amazing. Like literally, probably the best tasting food I've had on my entire trip. Well, some of the stuff from the elephant park was really amazing as well.

We spent the rest of the evening playing cards. A lot of people went to bed around 9pm. I went to bed around 10 and a few others went to bed around 11. I stayed up a bit to finish blogging.

I just slept in my clothes that I had been wearing all day. I didn't want to have to dig through my bag in the dark. I also didn't want to get my clean clothes all sweaty and dirty. There were small fans on the wall but it didn't really reach to my bed. It was okay though. I actually woke up around 4am and had to use the blanket that was provided.

During the night I woke up a few times. Once I think around 2. Once around 5. And then everyone got up around 6am so I finally got up around 6:30. All I needed to do was get up and go to the bathroom. I wasn't going to change or shower or anything and I was still packed.

We ate breakfast which had been prepared for us. It was a baguette with a thing egg to put inside the baguette. There were also bananas. We then settled our bills from any drinks we had and walked back out through the village to the bus.

Here, instead of hanging clothes out to dry wherever or putting them on a rock in the sun, they have actually made racks. There were some plastic ones I saw while we were driving but a lot of them are on wooden racks. The clothes are all on wire hangers as well. It's pretty cute. Especially when it is a bunch of little girl clothing.

Here are some of the Vietnamese words Matt has taught us so far. I can't guaranteed they are spelled correctly. The parentheses is how to pronounce it and the English after that is the translation.

Cong chao (king zhao) no worries

Xin chao (zin zhao) hello

Camone (c'mon) thank you

Cong camone (kong c'mon) no thank you

"1 2 3 go" is what their toast translates to. I don't remember what it is in Vietnamese.

Com = rice

Pho (fur) noodle