March 2 Ben Tre (Mekong Delta)

We went for a bike ride again this morning and then took a Motorscooter taxi into Ben Tre. Taxi cars are hard to find in the delta so Joan (under great duress and stress) climbed onto the back of a scooter one last time. Ben Tre is on a branch of the Mekong River and is a busy port. It also has a huge market that was filled with fishmongers. There were more kinds of fish then I could ever name. Alongside the fish were the shellfish and the snakes. The surprise was the locals doing their shopping without getting off their scooters. Even in the covered market scooters were driving right up to the vendors and leaning over to select the produce. Most of the scooters are between 50 and 100cc’s. But they are all 4 stroke engines and still pollute. Ben Tre is connected to an island just offshore by a footbridge. Again the crush of scooters was incredible. I created a traffic jam when I stopped to take pictures. We stayed long enough in Ben Tre to take pictures of the sunset and then we took the motorscooters back to the hotel in the dark.