I think we're suffering from delayed jet-lag now. Neither of us managed more than a few hours sleep last night. We had to get out to the travel office at the end of the alley for 7.20 this morning. A car picked us up and took us somewhere else in Saigon, God knows where, and we were transferred into a small shuttle bus. We carried on, just the two of us, thinking we were the only passengers, but no - silly - the driver did several more stops in decrepit anonymous suburbs and it started filling up. So we moved ourselves to the front seats beside the driver which gave us a bit more leg and bag room, but only one of us had a seat belt. Rather worrying later on when he was rattling along the motorway horn blaring, hurling the bus at any gap between the vehicles in front no matter how narrow, all the while either eating, smoking, or gabbling on his phone. I tried not to take any notice and didn't attempt any communication with the driver because I didn't want to distract him further.

The landscape was a lot of rice paddies. Saw a few egrets but so far this trip has been very disappointing for birds. We crossed a number of small rivers, branches of the mighty Mekong and then there was a huge and very modern bridge just before we had a 20 minute break at a bus garage, which I think was in the town of Vinh Long. We crossed another gigantic bridge a half hour later and we were in Can Tho. The driver let us out before the bus station and waved us vaguely up a side road. A helpful man hanging about on the pavement told us it's a couple of kilometres to our hotel, so we got in a taxi and soon we were here, the Kim Lan Hotel. We've got a very nice room 4 floors up with a view over the city, and blissful air-conditioning.

Rested a while in the room because we were both dead beat, then ventured out into a quite considerable heat and humidity for a late lunch. The old woman who's the resident boat-trip-to-the-floating-markets tout was on to us like a rocket. We shook her off, but having been down to the quayside to check out the competition we decided we might as well go with her as with anyone else, so that's what we're doing. 5.30am tomorrow. Aaarghh!

The river front is interesting with all sorts of boats chugging to and fro. There's a passenger ferry to the other bank and lots of ships loaded with dredged up silt heading down towards the sea. We saw a long procession of boats packed with people, one of them had two Chinese dragons and drummers on board. Don't know what that was about. There was a barge carrying a massive load of loose rice, must've been hundreds of tonnes of it, loaded into a funnel shaped container that was wider than the boat itself. I had a fish soup for lunch that was excellent, at the Sao Hom restaurant right on the waterside situated inside the former market hall.

Looked inside yet another Pagoda. More incense and sparkly gods. Robbie's getting rather upset at these so-called animal loving Buddhists for their practice of keeping swallows packed in tiny cages at the gates of their temples, so that people can pay them money to set one free. I keep telling her don't be blackmailed - they'll just go out and trap some more, the callous b******s. About the only wild birds we've seen today have been a couple of rather bedraggled looking swallows swooping over the river. I wonder if they're ones that have just been released from the temple. Where are all the birds in this country? Not a vulture in the sky, not a gull or a cormorant on the river, not even city pigeons. Have they eaten them all?

We were so hot and tired we came back again after lunch for a siesta. Went to the Sao Hom again for dinner but mine was a bit disappointing compared to lunch. I had fish in a clay pot with plain rice, but not much of it and not a vegetable in sight, for a whopping hundred thousand Dong. The place was packed out with European tour groups. We talked with two retired English couples on the table next to us. It's always pleasing to discover we're not the oldest backpackers in town.