When it rains, it really rains!

Our brilliant plan of taking the day tour to the Mekong Delta area started at 7 in the morning, which meant no Vietnamese coffee at Highlands Coffee (not a great way to begin the morning). The bus ride took 3 hours to Mỹ Tho on the Mekong River for our first of many boat rides to see bee hives (?), followed by a tour of the coconut candy factory, then to lunch, before ending the tour. About half way into the tour, the sky opened up and started to pour for hours and hours...oh right, it's the "monsoon" season.

Emma and I were soaked and we both started to question if we wanted to stay overnight in Bến Tre with all this rain. Our vision of cycling along beautiful picturesque rice fields and floating markets quickly faded into us riding in the rain. We figured once we got to Bến Tre, everything would work out fine and we would have a great day. Well, our tour guide didn't drop us off at Bến Tre and we were back at Mỹ Tho. "Oh you should have told me you wanted to get off at Bến Tre" - the response from our guide...WTF! We had told him that we would like to go one way and get off at Bến Tre in the morning, clearly he didn't listen or remember. Now we're stranded at Mỹ Tho's Visitor Center and we're told it's a 45-minute taxi ride to Bến Tre...again, WTF! Emma and I both looked at each other and nodded...'let's take the public bus back to HCMC and check into Elios Hotel tonight and bail on the Mekong trip'.

The only available room Elios Hotel had was a deluxe room...done.