Mekong Delta

After a (free) breakfast of Vietnamese coffee and french bread with jam/butter and eggs, our tour guide picked us up for our overnight trip to the Mekong Delta. We were told that this tour company was better than others because they kept their groups small -- about 10 people -- but were disappointed to see that there appeared to be closer to 20 people on the bus :( At least it was an air conditioned bus with lots of extra seats... or so we thought. Half way on our journey, they moved all of us to a much smaller minibus with just enough seats, but we did have AC, as weak as it was.

When we arrived at the Mekong, we boarded a small boat and headed towards a fruit market. As we were motoring along the waterways, children would hang on the the bumpers (old tires) on the sides of the vessel and go for the free ride, and sometimes they would somehow avoid the motor and just climb on the back of the boat! We only had about 15 minutes to browse the fruit market, so it was just enough time for Eric to buy a durian and a pineapple on a stick and me to pick up a guava. The durian wasn't bad, but the pineapple was overripe and my guava was underripe. This explains the cheap price we paid for them.

Next we stopped at a fish farm and fruit orchard where we didn't get to eat the fish or the fruit... instead they fed us a lunch of stir fried pork and veggies over instant noodles and a dessert of fresh fruit not from the orchard. Poor Eric again found himself surrounded by rows and rows of unripened fruits he could not eat (longans).

After lunch we visited a coconut candy making factory. It smelled soooo good! Basically, they would take fresh coconuts, scrape the pulp out of them, squeeze the juice out of the pulp to get coconut milk, and they boil the coconut milk until it becomes a caramel like consistency. They would let this cool and then cut it up into little squares and pack each one by hand. Crazy! It was a very simple but efficient factory. We tried some of the candy while it was still warm and it is addictively tasty! Some were flavored with pandan leaves or chocolate.

Our next stop was a small village where we were loaded into rowboats and rowed down the river by two strong little ladies. I think it was supposed to be a quiet drift down the river taking in the sights and sounds of the simple rural Mekong Delta life. In actuality, it was ridiculous and totally touristy. For starters, we were given rice paddy hats to wear (on top of our Tilley hats). The lady steering the boat kept yelling in Vietnamese to the other rower and to the people on shore. At one point, we were reminded by someone on shore that we should tip the rowers for their hard work. We felt like such stupid foreigners wearing funny hats. It was more angering than relaxing.

The best part of the trip was when we finally checked into our hotel in Can Tho and headed out for dinner. We were starving at this point and filled up on Vietnamese goat curry, deep fried spring rolls and a some noodle soup medley. Can Tho is one of the largest cities in Vietnam, and man does it have a shite night market. We were right on the waterfront and it seemed pretty dead. What made it fun were some kids who played with us on the walk back to the hotel -- they kept pretending they had fangs made out of their hands or something.

We rose early the next day to get herded to the floating market. It's nothing like what you see in the pictures. The motors on the boats made it loud and stinky, and it looked like people were just loading piles of stuff from the large wholesale boats to the smaller retail ones. Mostly, it was potatoes, cabbages, watermelon, pineapple, and mangoes. Oh, one guy sold overpriced drinks. This Chinese lady on our trip bought 15 kilos of mangoes since they were $0.50 a kilo. We just sat there and wondered why people spent so much energy loading fruit and veggies from land onto large boats, only to load them onto smaller boats and bring them back to land.

By this point, we were pretty tired of getting herded from place to place, but the next few stops were kind of interesting. We went to a rice noodle making factory where they take rice flour to make round sheets of thick rice paper that is cut into strips for "pho noodles". There was an old lady selling little rice cakes that were pretty tasty and only $0.35 each. We also stopped at a small island to cross a monkey bridge, a type of bridge traditionally used by the Vietnamese to cross small rivers. It was made of unsturdy looking logs and we were reminded to cross one at a time since several people from a previous tour group fell into the river since they were all one at the same time. Our last stop was at a rice factory where they shell, polish, and sort the rice. There were big shaking things and unprotected belts and gears all over the place, yet not a hard hat in sight! The workers didn't even wear shoes.

After a nice pho lunch back in Can Tho, we headed back to Ho Chi Minh City. The tour was hectic and more touristy than we wanted or were expecting (even though we are tourists). However, I'm glad we got to see the Mekong Delta, and we wouldn't have been able to see all the different things we saw otherwise. Instead of having sauteed beef penis with green pepper as was offered in a nearby restaurant, I had a pork rice soup for dinner and Eric had goat in coconut sauce and corn with dried shrimps. It was an early night as we prepared for another early morning to the Cu Chi tunnels!