C & C globetrotting around the world…

We booked a tour to the Mekong Delta, although we generally prefer to do stuff on our own. The Mekong is one of the largest rivers in Asia, originating from Tibet and winding its course through China, Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, forming a delta before emptying into the South China Sea after its epic journey of nearly 5,000 km. Our first stop on the tour was the city of My Tho, from where we took a motor boat and drove around Dragon, Unicorn, Turtle and Phoenix islands. On Unicorn Island we stopped at a bee farm where we enjoyed honey tea, as well as candied banana and ginger while listening to a performance of folk songs. We were also served tropical fruit, which was refreshing in the humid heat. We also took a short trip by rowing boat along a small canal, which is the way we had imagined the biggest part of the tour. It was very nice, but too short and we were constantly asked to give money, which was not too pleasant. This bothers us in Vietnam, that everyone sees you as a walking ATM and wants to extract money from you. From My Tho we drove to Ben Tre, home of the coconut. There we visited a coconut candy making factory and also got to sample the various flavours they make, as well as rice wine, coconut wine and banana wine. Everything tasted good, but we restrained from buying anything.

On the second day of the tour we hopped on a boat to see the Can Tho floating market, the biggest one in the area. There was mainly wholesale, with each ship putting up their produce on a stick so buyers can see from further away. Then potential buyers would approach the ships in smaller boats to negotiate and buy. Our boat pulled up to a pineapple ship that sold fresh pineapples cut up and ready to eat for $0.50, so we bought one and it was perfectly ripe and sweet. The “market” wasn’t as colourful as we expected, but still nice to see. We also visited a rice noodle factory and got to witness the process. First they make rice milk by mixing broken rice grains and tapioca flour to make a relatively thin white batter. They spread the batter on a hot surface similar to the one used for crepe (but larger) and cover it with a lid for about one minute. Then another person picks up the thin rice paper with a bat and puts it down on woven rattan planks. The planks are brought out in the sun for about an hour until the rice paper dries. Then, the rice paper is fed through a shredder which makes the noodles. A lady takes the bundles (each rice paper sheet makes one bundle) and packages them. The entire process from the rice milk to the finished noodles has to be done the same day, so it’s pretty interesting to see. From there we went to a fruit farm where we saw some exotic fruits: jackfruit, dragonfruit, kumquat and of course pomelos, mangos and papayas. We got to try some fresh papaya and mango, which were absolutely delicious. Because of the year-round hot climate in southern Vietnam, they can usually have 3 or 4 harvests per year. They also grow a lot of rice in the area, earning the name of “rice bowl of Vietnam”. The northern part of Vietnam also produces rice, but they use the dry method and only harvest twice per year due to the different climate, whereas the South can have up to 3 harvests of rice. Usually the country is the second-largest exporter of rice in the world, but next year they will probably advance to first place due to the floods in Thailand. We arrived in Chau Doc on the late afternoon and climbed Sam Mountain to watch the sunset from the hill-top monastery. From there you can also see the border with Cambodia one kilometer away.

On our third and last day on the tour, we took a small motor boat to a floating village on the Mekong River. Some houses were really nice and you could see that the people took pride in their homes. Some larger ones were floating fish farms as well, having a cage under the house where they kept 100,000 fish each. They feed them 4-5 times a day and in 7 months the fish reach 1kg, when they are sold to the fish factory to make frozen filets for export. They mainly farm catfish (pangasius) and tilapia here and received $1 per kilogram. We also visited a Cham village, the Muslim ethnic minority in the area. The Champa kingdom was controlling central and southern Vietnam, reaching from Hue to Nha Trang which got annexed by the Vietnamese in 1832. There we watched a lady weave a scarf and also went to the mosque. Overall the tour was good since we got to see the nice scenery of the Delta, try some fruits and handicrafts, but mainly because we met lots of nice co-travellers.