We've had an angry day. A couple of cyclo riders (a sort of passenger trailer attached to a bicycle that they use as rickshaws here) picked us up from the local tour agency office at 9 this morning, and took us to the river for a boat tour of the Cham minority village across the water. Robbie was in tears by the time we got on the boat: I hadn't noticed it, being in a different cyclo, but she'd seen a woman near the market selling live egrets trussed up on the pavement, for killing and cooking. This explains why the paddy fields are all but empty of egrets. We found her again walking back after the boat trip, and made plain our displeasure. She'd sold all the egrets but she had her foot on 2 black crowned night herons, just about alive and trussed up. She also had a pile of live turtles marooned on their backs, and a cage crammed full of sickly swallows. Do they eat the bloody swallows here too?

Anyway, the boat trip was pleasant enough. We went round many floating houses - the ones downriver are more picturesque than the upriver ones we saw on Tuesday. We saw a few terns flying downriver, the only seabirds we've seen yet. Keep going you sweet things! Don't stop till you get to Australia! We visited a floating fish farm. They keep fish in big cages underneath the floating building. A hatch was open where our boat man threw in some fish food pellets and the water just erupted with thousands of thrashing fish.

The next stop was a Cham village where they do hand weaving of cotton. A woman was working a loom, and there was lots of cotton goods for sale, of course. The village was all built on 10 foot stilts along the water's edge, to keep it above the regular floods. We walked along raised boardwalks to the road and visited the village mosque. (Most of the Cham people are Muslims.) The mosque was white painted and fairly plain.

We cruised upriver for another hour looking at floating and stilted houses, and we saw a lovely collared kingfisher sitting on a washing line - a small and delicate blue and white bird. Then we returned to town for the aforementioned argument with the bird woman. You'd think it not possible to have an argument with someone you share no common language with, but we've done it twice today...

Returned to the hotel for lunch, then we hired some cyclos and went to the Sam Mountain. Scary ride along a busy straight road for 6 kilometres in baking heat and dust. The riders only wanted 40 Dong each (£1.40) but we paid them a bit extra. Looked in a couple of pagodas at the foot of the mountain, which is a sacred pilgrimage site for Buddhists. All the usual incense, bells and icons, and whole roast pigs being laid at the foot of one of the goddesses. There were numerous dead swallows discarded with the ubiquitous garbage inside the railing around another icon. Our blood pressures began to rise...

We worked our way up the steps and paths above the pagodas in the blazing heat of the afternoon. There were temples and shrines every few yards of the route nearer the bottom, higher up they mostly gave way to shops selling drinks and offering hammocks for rest. There was a really gaudy dragon model coming out of a rock face, and a blue dinosaur (!?) We saw the only "Please put your litter in the bin" signs we have yet seen, but nonetheless the whole route was thickly blanketed in litter. Sacred mountain? b******s! Nothing is sacred to this fake religion. Vietnamese Buddhists defile every part of the world they touch. When we reached the summit it was a wasteland. Then the you-know-what really hit the air circulating machine when we went to look at the little shrine right at the peak, and they had many cages crammed full of swallows and finches. Some of the swallows were obviously dead already, many more dieing. Robbie flew into a rage and started haranguing one of the vendors and well, OK, I got pretty cross as well. I managed to get her down from there before the temple police were called. I'm sure such a cruel and brutal cult as Buddhism must have some really vicious cops somewhere. Yes, like I said, we've had an angry day...

On the plus side, we saw quite a few small wild birds on the ascent and descent. Not able to identify many because we lacked the strength to lug the bird book up there with us, and the birds are all very wisely secretive. A pair of beautiful green bee-eaters were the highlight, sweeping and diving after insects, exhalting in the ecstasy of their freedom. Buddhists take note.

We squeezed the two of us into one cyclo to come home, having haggled the rider down to 80,000 Dong. Then we had to give him the 100 he'd been asking because we felt guilty about making him do all that work. Local people often go 3 to a cyclo though, and I bet they don't pay that.

We had dinner at the Bay Bong restaurant again. Very lively in there, mostly travellers, and the food's pretty good. I had fish hotpot cooking at my table on a blazing stove.