We were up early for our trip to the Mekong Delta, having heard so much about it and read so much I was really looking forward to it. We were on the coach for an hour and a half  crawling through slow moving holiday traffic to reach a port city on the river. We embarked onto boat and then were taken across the river to a bee farm where surprisingly they made honey products. We were then walked to a fruit farm where we had fresh fruit and a musical interlude, including a one string mono harp, which was really interesting. The note of the harp was oscillated by bending a twig at one end.
After the fruit farm we had to walk for about ten minutes until we reached areas where pines and carts picked our group up for a two kilometre trip.
Leaving the horse and cart we were then transferred to sampans which took us two kilometres back along a canal to a coconut candy factory where we were invited to try the wares. Back onto the boat we were taken to a landing stage where we transferred to a smaller boat before being taken deep into the delta for lunch. The meal was in farm restaurant in the middle of an island and proved to be good.
We were then taken back to our larger boat and shuttled across the river to the port where our coach was waiting to take us back to Ho Chi Minh City.
In the evening we had booked a New Year celebration in our hotel which proved to be very interesting. The first act was a children's' marching band , which had no room to march. They were followed by a group of well rehearsed hotel staff who did a dance routine, then a Cuban band, followed by a juggling bar tender, an acoustic band and a dance troupe. At ten to midnight we were encouraged to toast the new year and ten the manager of the hotel gave a rather boring but thankfully short speech.The meal was good and the fireworks at midnight right across the river from us were fantastic going on for about fifteen minutes. All in all a great day.