The Mekong Delta

Yesterday Jason and I took our second and final day-trip to the Mekong Delta. After a couple hours of driving in a bus, we arrived at My Tho in the Ben Tre province. I was gagging when we descended the bus because the smell from the nearby fish sauce factory was really potent. They have large vats of rotting fish fermenting or something like that. But after walking about 100 feet, the smell began to fade.

From the tourist office, we boarded a boat that took us around parts of the delta. I could observe many of the houses and shacks up on stilts, boats, local fishing traps, and a lot of banana and cork trees. The water as a shade of milk chocolate, and the shores were lined with jungle. It was really pretty. There were four main islands we went around: Phoenix Island, Unicorn Island, Tortoise Island, and Dragon Island. Those are four important animals to the Vietnamese people. We actually stopped at Phoenix Island.

The tour was pretty well organized. At Phoenix Island, we got off the boat and walked down a small, narrow, bridge that looked like it didn't have many years left standing. We walked though the jungle and observed a rice paper making hut. At first Jason and I thought they meant stationary paper, but we soon learned that it was the rice paper wraps for cooking. They baked some of them into a mild tasting snack, which was for sale of course. We made many of these cultural "pit stops," where we had a brief introduction and then conveniently 10-15 minutes of "free time" to shop. From there, we had lunch. The lunch was included, but it was terrible. They recommended trying the Mekong's famous elephant ear fish, which was not included and, of course, the most expensive thing on the menu.

After lunch we taken to a bee farm. By this point it was raining pretty hard, so we weren't able to observe many of the bees before they descended upon the tables where we were sitting. The locals made us some honey, citrus tea and allowed us to try some honeycomb and a strong coconut wine. The wine was really strong and not very good. Our guide told us it was 35% alcohol. It tasted like straight vodka. Next we took an "ox cart" through the village. We expected a yak or water buffalo, but instead there were tiny ponies with feathers and fake flowers tied into their manes.

We arrived at another thatched hut with tables. Outside there were a couple of cages. Inside one was a huge python, and the other housed a small squirrel. Our guide called us over to the tables. We sat down and were given some fruit while we listened to traditional music played by some of the local people. A couple of the women sang, and three men sat on stools, each playing a different instrument. Our guide kept reinforcing that they were not professionals, but he hoped that we enjoyed listening. The fruit plate was filled with different fruits: watermelon, pineapple, dragon fruit, rambutan, longan, etc. I ate some pineapple and dragon fruit before biting into my rambutan and finding a white worming crawling around in the shell. I quickly spit it out and that was the end of the fruit plate.

Two local woman in the traditional hats took us back to our boat in small wooden boats, paddling us down a small stream in the estuary. Our final stop was the coconut candy factory. We observed the local people making the candy, drying and cutting it, wrapping it, and packaging it all by hand! It was pretty amazing, and the wrapping looked like a boring, monotonous job. There were about five women sitting in chairs around a larger table. They grabbed one of the tiny cut candies that were constantly tossed into the center of the table. They then wrapped them in tiny rice paper and then regular paper. When Jason asked, our guide said they probably made about 700,000 dong (42-45 US dollars) a month. I can't imagine!