First days in the Mekong Delta

We are staying a couple of days in My Tho, a city on the Mekong River about 75 kilometers (2 hours by bus) from Ho Chi Minh City. We have a very nice hotel, clean with an airy room and a balcony overlooking the wide river, for about $15 U.S. a night. The view is magnificent and we get a nice breeze. We can observe the river traffic and all what's happening on the river. It is time to relax.

The people are very friendly in this town in spite of our language difficulties. I am trying to teach myself some Vietnamese with the help of my guide book and some of the Vietnamese we have met. I use a lot of sign language, too. Another difficult thing is to cross the street, which makes it hard to go for a walk or a run. There is a constant flow of traffic, mostly motorbikes and some bicycles and there are almost no traffic lights. To cross the street, one moves slowly into the flow and the bikes weave around you. It is a little unnerving. Since the traffic is constantly moving, there is less gas consumption that way.

In the afternoon we visited a snake farm run near My Tho. The place is run by the Vietnamese army which breeds the snakes and uses the venom from the cobras to make anti-venom medicine and also sells the snakes for food. The huge pythons are in miserable small cages. There are hundreds of cobras of many colors and sizes, many in its own small screened cage so that you can see them close up if you like. But the most amazing thing was to see hundreds of cobras swimming in an area the size of a small pool with an island in the middle. You have nothing to protect you except a five foot wall that the snakes are unable to climb over.