-^-for posterity-^-

can tho.

down the mekong river about sixty kilometers you'll stumble across a hot-to-trot town that calls itself can tho. its much larger than long xuyen. its streets are larger, cleaner and generally smoother. i haven't stumbled across any dirt roads yet.

can tho is home to a few important sights. it's home to the can tho university where many of the teachers at an giang university studied. it's a large university and i've yet to visit it. because this is the lunar new year, everybody travels home. all of the english teachers from can tho are here now and we were told to come down, see the sights and spend some quality time with them.

the next important sight in can tho is its statue of uncle ho. it is a massive statue of the man raising his right hand and smiling. it was superbly placed right next to the river and is surrounded by a delightful park. the chain surrounding the fence is made up of large, metallic, five-pointed stars. the statue was humorously referred to as the, "tin man", by jack. it's supposed to look like it's made out of silver but it appears to be fashioned from tin. he looks remarkably like the tin man from the wizard of oz.

the final sight to be had here is the floating market. i'd heard many glorious stories of floating markets that one could pass from boat to boat as if on land. it was to be a sea of boats all linked by vegetable/fruit commerce. it was to be wonderful, glorious, a surreal nirvana on the river. it wasn't as exciting as the descriptions promised (but what ever is).

we boarded a small boat that we paid twelve dollars to take us out from five in the morning till twelve noon. our driver was a shy, youngish girl with long, stringy hair and calloused feet. jack and i sat in the front of the boat and we roared off. it was just after five in the morning and everything was mist. the mekong looked like a solid sheet of ice and we seemed to easily push through. the trip down the river was slow but watching the sun come up over our left shoulders. it slowly peered at us through the jungle growth as a huge glowing orange. it rose and gained energy. eventually, it blinded and burned us.

the floating market was a good hour away. we saw it as we rounded a bend in the river. it was a tangled mass of wooden boats all floating aimlessly. some boats had large bamboo poles died to their bows. at the top of the poles were tied a variety of vegetables. this served as a type of advertisement. whatever that particular boat was selling was hanging there.

we entered the middle of the market and it looked less like a myriad of boats creating a new land mass in the water and more like a jumble of boats all sliding, bumping and grinding past one another. we were hungry because we woke up late and had no breakfast. we asked where we could eat and the girl took us to some random house boat and we boarded.

the inside of the boat was all wood and it made you feel like you were in a cigar box. the roof, walls and floor were all worn with age and we sat at a small, wooden table drinking fresh coconut juice. i chatted with the owner of the boat for a while. he was very interested in my story and i was very interested in his.

him and his family usually stayed in the floating market. they sold things generally but led a peaceful life. his wife, daughter-in-law, son and two grandsons lived with them. it was a relatively large boat and most of the family eyed us cautiously from hammocks. one of his grandsons approached us holding his brother. his brother couldn't have been more than six months old. he was pudgy and curious. the older grandson said he was fifteen years old. he looked like he was eight. he was thin and short but had a well proportioned face.

they had no food on this boat and someone went looking for the roaming breakfast boat. it approached and we enjoyed some sort of pig-feet and noodle combination. it was really quite good once you got past the little hairs on the pigs feet. we chatted a bit more and eventually headed off.

the rest of the trip was much too long. there was another market that she wanted to take us to but the sun was burning us and the motor was roaring a bit much. we complied (we had paid and this other market could have turned out to be this semi-floating nirvana we were searching for). it turned out to be nothing of the sort.

we slept the whole ride home. having fresh water spewed in our face, the boat continually weaving under us, everything was beautiful. tomorrow we return home. back to what has oddly enough become the familiar.