Cai Be

Today I was awoken at 4:30AM by the cockerels! We were given a simple breakfast of fried egg and baguette with pineapple and banana.

We left the home stay and started our journey to another one. We boarded a boat to a floating market where there were boats FULL of fruits and vegetables. In one boat, there were more than one thousand pineapples!

We stopped at a vermicelli factory. Vermicelli is basically noodles. To make vermicelli, first, they take rice and mash it and make the rice paper. Next, they let them dry in the sun. It dries into a flexible pancake and they push this through a machine and make vermicelli! 

The boat driver pulled over for us to see a pottery factory. In the entrance, there were two puppies the size of your hand. They were so cute! Our guide brought us some clay and it felt really weird. It wasn't hard, it was squishy. 

The kilns were humungous! The pots were kept in the kiln for over a month at over 1000 degrees!

We arrived at our second 'home stay' that was more like a hostel. It was right by the river so whenever a boat went past, it would make a really loud noise.


The reason for that: the engines on the boats were re-cycled from either cars, bigger boats or maybe even factories.

We were called to start making dinner. I went into the kitchen and saw everyone who was staying there helping each other.

For once, Dad was cooking and everyone else in our family were having drinks! So this is what it feels like to be him! He was good and cooked mixed noodles, fried spring rolls and also made the mixture for the spring rolls

I was woken up in the early hours of the morning by boats coming past!  It was impossible to sleep. While I was awake I saw a rat run across a beam in our roof! From then on when I was awake, I was alert to pests and creepy crawlies. It wasn't very pleasant!

Even though the home stays we're a good experience, I wouldn't have wanted to stay any longer because it was uncomfortable and like camping in a jungle next to a boat motorway! However, it was nice to know how the Vietnamese live.

We had breakfast and walked a mile through villages and jungle to catch a boat. On the way, we went to a small fruit farm and sat with the owner who offered us different fruits including Rambutan, Water apple, Mango, Longan and Guava. 

The only fruit I liked was the water apple. Even though this might sound strange, the water apple tastes best dipped in chilli and salt! the owner was great fun and gave Dad and Mum lots of alcohol he made from fruit. 

Afterwards, we went to a place where people made coconut candy, snake wine, black seed banana wine, pineapple wine, yam wine, rice paper and popping rice. 

Popping rice is what rice crispies are made from. We were there when they were popping the rice and I tried some when it came out of the wok! It tasted like popcorn!



We boarded the boat for our resort and when the boat driver pulled in at our resort on the mekong we were given cold face towels and lemon juice. We did more homework and went for a swim to cool off.

Today we left to go to Saigon ( Ho chi Minh city). On the way we stopped at 'the ancient house' where a film called 'The Lover' was set. Margaret Duras wrote the book, then people discovered it and made a film about it. Margaret wrote it based on her own heart-breaking story as she was never able to marry the love of her life. This was because she was poor and he was rich, she wasn't Vietnamese and they had lived together as a married couple which was frowned upon in those days.

Next, we went to a local school and were basically mobbed by kids! They ran up and were asking for autographs….so we signed! It was funny. 

We went into an English class and were being asked questions like how old are you and what's your name. Someone asked me what do I do for work! We were asked by the teachers to sing a song. It was embarrassing!