31 Dec 2019
We were really disappointed by our tour. We were mostly looking forward to spending time in the floating market but instead our guide breezed right through it. He let us stop for pineapple and that was pretty much it. My husband had to insist 5 times before our guide got us the noodle soup (which turned out to not be that good anyways). For everything we wanted to get at the floating market- noodle soup, coffee, fruit- he would say "it's not good here, we can get some at a different market". So basically we were in the floating market for less than an hour. Then he took us to this awful local market on land where the smell of fish was overwhelming and the amount of scooters coming in every direction made us feel unsafe. He kept buying kilos of fruit without asking us what we wanted. I felt like he just bought the fruit for himself instead of buying stuff for us at the floating market. After the market we had to sit in the hot sun while our guide disappeared for 30min to find the driver. The monks at the nearby Temple welcomed us in to sit in the shade and even gave us free iced coffee. Honestly they were way more accommodating than our guide was the whole day. The rest of the day was just lunch at a local restaurant where we had to pay for our own drinks (not even water was included). In order to get to the restaurant we had to ride these old rickety bikes on a narrow lane with scooters constantly flying by and honking, which made us all uncomfortable since we are not experienced bike riders. Then there as some other boat ride and a long walk in another village which looked the same as every other village in Vietnam. then waiting another 20 minutes for a ferry to take us back to the car, and a 3 hour ride back to our hotel. Honestly the whole day felt like a waste and we were really disappointed by the whole tour. Our experience in Cai Rang was nothing even close to the pictures the tour company showed us and what we had seen in videos from other tours.