HCMC to Cantho
Field trip! Starting in Ho Chi Minh City, we'll head out to Can Tho, in the middle of the Mekong Delta.
HCMC traffic.
HCMC outskirts.
Bridge.
Stop! Pay toll.
Alternatively, go shop.
If you lived here, you'd be home now.
Behold the future.
An alternative.
You can breathe now.
What on earth? It's a Cao Dai or "High Place" church at Tien Giang. The church was founded in Vietnam in 1926.
Village life must be nearby.
Park the car and follow the path.
Carefully prepared fields; bananas in the background; no shortage of water.
House.
Cheaper model.
Cemetery.
Stand aside.
On the road again: bridge over the Mekong.
Over the railing.
Lane discipline? What's that?
So much for bridges. It's time for a ferry.
Plenty of traffic.
The safety gates are relaxed.
So are some of the passengers.
You can't hear the ferry's horn blasting, so imagine the pilot cursing this hotshot.
Trouble ahead for the ferrymen: a cable-stayed bridge under construction.
Can Tho (or Cantho), fronting on a branch of the river.
Waterfront street.
Lots of new construction.
Street market.
Seafood in abundance.
Fruit, too.
Not much evidence of the French regime, but here's a bit.
And another.
This, too.
Maybe this qualifies if you consider the instruments and the clothes. The sign in the bell says Clarinet and Drum Club, in this case hired to escort a funeral cortege.
A clean break with the past.
Modern retail has arrived with this shopping center.
Check-out heaven.
Top-shelf whiskey.
We've headed to the edge of town, where the land meets the water and where people live in between.
A barge loaded with brick is unloaded the hard way.
Transshipment.
A building site.
Street scene.
Pedestrian bridge.
Raw land waiting for a builder.
Back in town. Was it what you expected to see?