Last day - Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

We are sitting in the San Francisco airport, waiting for our flight to Phoenix, so I am going post my last post of the trip.  Dean is trying to sleep as we just came off a 12 hour plane ride from Hong Cong.

On our last day in Vietnam we did a cruise on the Mekong River on a small paddle boat.  We drove to Cai Be, a small village surrounded by fruit orchards and home to a floating market.  The boats anchor on the river and put up a flag pole with the merchandise that they are selling.  For example, we saw a sweet potato on a mast.  

On the way to the river we walked thru some of the shops and watched the locals make rice paper, prepare fruit for selling, and 'pop' rice for some delicious rice cakes.

Vietnam is a leading producer of coffee so our guide stopped and bought everyone coffee.  Dean and don't drink real coffee so we enjoyed some hammock time.  The owner of the coffee shop also raised fighting chickens and he put on a little demonstration of training these fighting cocks.

We stopped at the garden restaurant of Ba Kiet, an old house built in 1924, and had a delightful lunch before returning to the city.  Once in the city we had one last adventure - a motorbike ride back to the hotel.  We rode on the back of some motor scooters thru the traffic for about 30 minutes.  It was quite a hoot!  We could not take our cameras on that adventure - you will have to take my word that it was fun!

That night we had a farewell dinner with the group.  There was 16 travelers in the group, a main guide and 4 country guides and everyone got along really well.  Good trip.  
I will go on OAT trips again!