Bats in the Pagoda

It was a long, hot bus ride from Saigon to Can Tho, the bustling epicenter of the Mekong Delta. The bus was purportedly air conditioned, but in reality the cooling system merely stirred the hot air around. Finally, we arrived. Our hotel, a boutique high rise, was blissfully cool with huge rooms and river views and it was on the happy medium between "budget backpackers"--more to Chris' taste--and "colonial-era luxury"--more to my taste.

On our first day in Can Tho, we hired a boat to visit the floating market and the explore the back canals of the Delta. The water itself was a brackish gray and the rice paddies were emerald green--there is no color like the color of young rice. Later in the day, we hired a car to visit the "bat pagoda," a pagoda where hundreds of huge fruit bats live in the trees. They look like furry red foxes with pointy faces and hang upside down, wrapped in evil leathery wings. Occasionally, they awakened and squawked at each other. We arrived in the mid afternoon and waited for hours to see the bats fly off to the nearby farms at dusk, which, when it finally took place with the last possible minute of daylight, was quite a sight. Here you can just make them out slumbering in the trees.The next day, we booked a biking tour of the Delta called "Through the Lush Countryside," a little schmaltzy, I know, but a fun little ride. The route wasn't quite as rural as I had hoped but the section of the ride pictured below was lovely. It turns out that the Delta is very crowded with people, shops and motorcycles, as well as being the breadbasket of Vietnam and producing huge amounts of rice for export. Birds spotted: white stork, coral-billed scimitar babbler