Wandering the World: The Mekong Delta

So far our tour has been a success! Yay :) We've seen a lot more things than we would have on our own. Our group hasn't been too big either although we did miss out on a crocodile farm today because there were only 4 of us. I wasn't all that interested in it though so no biggy. We head to Cambodia tomorrow and will likely stay there for about two weeks. We are most likely going to try to get our dive certification while there but we have some research to do still. Wish us luck at the boarder tomorrow!

Nov 7 – The Mekong

It was raining lightly when we awoke this morning. Even after breakfast and boarding the bus it was still drizzling. At least it wasn't pouring this time. We stopped at a pagoda on our way to My Tho which was quite lovely and had two big Buddhas, one happy Buddha and one lady Buddha. It was still raining slightly but when we eventually got to the boat it seemed to have stopped. YAY! Our boat, however, had some wet seats due to the rain the night before. You were lucky if you got away with a dry bum. We went down the river a little ways and stopped at Turtle Island where we were fed lunch. Lunch wasn't half bad with grilled pork, egg, vegetables on steamed rice. After lunch we headed towards another island, before reaching it we briefly met up with another boat to transfer two passengers who had been left at the dock. On the next island we got to see the making of some coconut candy, it was soooo good, and try some coconut wine, banana wine and some lemon honey tea. While there it started pouring again although it eased off some before we took a row boat through some canals. Our next destination included fruit sampling and traditional music. I'm not sure I'm a fan of Vietnamese traditional music, it's a little cacophonous. From here we met up with the bus and then were transferred onto a minibus as there were only about 8 of us staying for a longer tour. Most people only had done a day trip. We were driven to Can Tho and deposited at our hotel. We have to be up at 6am so we can be on the river for 7am to check out the floating markets. The room isn't too bad and it has A/C, it looks like a room we would have picked to stay in anyways. We headed down to the river for some dinner. We got a little grill on our table and grilled some shrimp, squid and some sort of vegetable, YUM. We were still feeling tired so it was an early night especially with our 6am wake up tomorrow.

Happy Buddha and Lady Buddha

Beau being an Asian tourist on the canal

The canal in the rain

Nov 8 – The Floating Market

Our lovely wake-up call along with two alarms woke us up at 6am. We were out of the hotel a little after 7 and on a boat towards the Cai Rang floating market. The floating market was super cool. Bigger boats would sell to smaller boats and then the smaller boats pull up along side trying to get you to buy coffee, drinks, beer, and fruit. We pulled up alongside one boat that was selling pineapples. It was very cool to see such a different way of life. After we had finished at the floating market we went to a rice paper factory where they make rice paper and rice noodles. Apparently these are made of some sort of mixture of rice and tapioca. The mixture is poured on a hot plate where it is cooked and then transferred onto bamboo mats which are then placed in the sun to dry for 5 hours. Afterwards it can be cut down for rice paper or shredded to make rice noodles. Next we took our boat to another area where there were fish and fruit farms. For the fish farms there were little ponds, not sure if they were man made or not, that held several different kinds of fish. Our guide threw some fish food in and the fish went wild. There was also a “monkey bridge” across the pond, which was a piece of bamboo to walk on with pieces on either side for support. The fruit farm lay behind the fish pond. They were growing durian, mango, papaya, dragon fruit and a weird fruit called soursoc which we got to try. It was sour close to the sink but sweeter near the middle. It had stringy/spiny bits around the pit like that of a mango. It was good and weird. This concluded our tour around the Mekong at Can Tho. We were taken back to shore and had some time for lunch before getting on a bus to Chau Doc. There were only 4 of us total headed to Chau Doc so we were put on a local mini bus. We stopped lots to let people on and off and didn't get to go see the crocodile farms. There were two “monks” who got on the bus who had obviously been begging, they started counting a big stack on money. I'm not sure they were real monks because I've heard monks aren't supposed to beg for money, also one of them tried to start smoking on the bus. It was a non-smoking bus and the bus operator had actually had someone put out their cigarette before getting on the bus so we put a stop to it. I'm not sitting beside a smoker if I don't have to. After all the locals were dropped in Chau Doc we continued on briefly to a pagoda on the side of Sam Mountain. It was an interesting place, there were alters built into the mountain in caves. The view from the pagoda was quite pretty and you could see the Cambodian border. We headed to our hotel and were released for the day. We get up at 6am again and have a few stops before we head to Cambodia. We are excited to see our next country!