Mekong River Delta

I hit up the tourist office at 8am -- about half an hour early for the Mekong River Delta trip.  While I waited, I bought a water bottle, removed the plastic wrapper and slowly drank it.  I wanted to pitch the plastic wrapper, so I asked (by "asked" I mean I "mimed" the question) the tourist office employee if she had a trash can.  She just grinned and pointed at a bottle on the street.  Ok, I thought that was a little strange, but I'll put my trash in the bottle.  I grabbed the bottle and then she really started laughing and shook her head.  Confused, I now put my hands in a "whaa??" position.  She mentioned that I should throw the trash on the street.  I did so and she said, "clean street every hour."  Uh -- no.  In my time there, the street was hardly ever cleaned.  Unlike Philly where there are trash bins lining the sidewalks and people just choose to throw their crap on the street, here, everyone is encouraged to do so (aside from the fact that sidewalk trash cans don't really exist).  Weird.

The bus showed up shortly thereafter and I was treated to a fairly comfy and large bus.  A plasma screen was mounted behind the driver's head (though they didn't use it for this trip).  We made a couple of stops and then we were off -- an Asian dude who didn't know the meaning of "take up as little space as possible when you're sitting next to someone" sardined next to me.  I might've given a couple of elbows when he was sleeping.  hehe

The 1.5 hour trip out to the river was fairly uneventful.  The bus was filled with a mix of Euros, Australians, and Asian folks -- contrary to my trip to the Kwai River, there were no Americans on this trip.  Before we hit the river, we were taken to a gift shop area that was nestled on a nice garden. 

I picked up some really cool artwork for my new place -- Rach, I think you'll be pleased with these choices; if not, you'll just have to fake it, and help me make it work ;p

We then moved over to the first boat.  The boat was fairly large (it had seating for roughly 75 people), used wicker / cane seats, and our tour guide chatted as we cruised down the river.  At one point, he mentioned that this river could be taken to China -- if I wasn't mistaken, he said it was a 5 hour ride (though that seems a little short from south central Vietnam).  Our journey on this particular boat lasted about half an hour.  The view was pretty striking -- the river had a mocha color and was amazingly huge. 

      [Safety first!  Nothing like life preservers being tied up on the boat's ceiling.  hehe]

[We'd periodically pass these random boathouses.  Really interesting to see the folks living and fishing from them]

Our first stop was a coconut candy "plant."  With the abundance of coconuts, the locals did everything with them -- made food, housing, wine, souvenirs, clothes, etc.  It was crazy...To make the candy, they took a machine to break open the coconuts and then would grind down the coconuts with a fairly primitive (but effective) churn looking contraption.  I didn't see the candy getting "baked" but I'm sure it did at some point.  When we were there, four people were packaging the candy in rice paper.  We got to try some and it's delicious!  I may have bought a package of chocolate coconut that might be shared with everyone upon my return...

Oh, no; we weren't done trying coconut products yet.  We then got to move to the wine tasting.  All of the coconut wines were at least 55% alcohol, with this bad boy having the most alcohol content of them all...

I'm not really sure if this really existed or was just a result of taking too many tasting shots...

We continued down the river towards our next stop.  While cruising down, we passed a really cool "resort" that our guide assured us would make an amazing honeymooning locale. 

[During the trip, I befriended these two -- the one on the left was from Ottawa and the one on the right was from Belgium.  Ottawa had been traveling for a year and a half while Belgium had been traveling for 5 years (she would periodically go back to Belgium to work for traveling money).  Curiously enough to me, both were very envious of my situation.  Not sure why -- I was really envious of their traveling exploits...]

A really cool thing about this area was that we made a turn towards the river bank and then we'd disappear down a path that didn't appear to exist at first blush.  Of course, while being in Vietnam, it's hard not to think about the war, and one thing that caught my attention was how ridiculously challenging it would've been to navigate these waters by someone who wasn't familiar with the area. 

At any rate, we turned into a really narrow part of the river.  It was so narrow that we actually had an unfortunate collision with an interestingly painted boat.  No one was hurt; it just grinded off some wood on both sides (I'm sure they can buff it out ;p).

Our next stop was at a bee farm.  We journeyed about 300 yards into the jungle and were greeted by a crapload of bee "hives." 

 We continued along the path and met a coconut house that contained virtually nothing for sale other than this amazing item that I believe at least gives "Jesus y bus" a run for it's money.  I really, really wanted to get this (not quite as much as the dog in Bangkok, but close)...

         [Oh yeah, the lights blinked; I just happened to catch 'em when most of 'em were on]

[I believe the technical names were, "delicious," "slightly more delicious," and "extra, supa dupa delicious."]

[The "legendary 'Dragon Eye'" -- ok, maybe I made up the "legendary" part, but they were delicious.]

Almost as amazing as the fruit was the tea that was served.  It was a honey based tea that was crazy sweet -- there's gotta be a margarita with this flavor.  It was unbelievably good!  I might've asked for seconds...

While we were eating, and, I think to prove that the honey was made onsite, this was brought around to each table...

[I really like the "safety precautions" -- no gloves, mask, etc.  Let's just grab some bees!!]

We were then treated to an interesting band.  The singers were two locals, and we were told that the songs would be fairly romantic.  I was somewhat skeptical because I generally think the language sounds a bit harsh, and maybe it was being in the jungle, but something about it really worked...I didn't capture the best part, which was the duet, but here's a snippet.  They played three songs -- one by the man, one by the woman, and then one with the two of them together.

We said our farewells and headed through another path that took us deeper into the jungle. 

               [Wait...Are those healers??  These type of dogs were all over the place]

We arrived at a barn where some really sad looking horses emerged.  Yep, they pulled us in tiny little carriages.  I felt bad for the horses for two reasons -- a) the horses didn't look strong enough to pull us (though they did) and b) the drivers would whip the crap outta the horses with bamboo sticks.  We moved through down the path and bizarre, seemingly multi-million dollar houses would suddenly appear from the squalor.  Weird...

We made our through yet another path towards a paddle boat dock.  We passed this, which I noticed was fairly common in Saigon.  I'm not sure if there's a scientific rationale, or if this is just the culture, but in certain areas, the dead were buried above ground...

We got on the paddle boats and headed downstream.  I kinda felt bad for ours -- we had a smallish woman rowing us, and she was actually passed by one of the other boats.  One of the tourists on the boat grabbed a paddle and tried to help her.  Yikes...We did get there, at least...

We mounted up again on the main boat and traveled further down the river.  We stopped at our final destination -- a lunch place (it was now about 2pm) and a makeshift "zoo."

The food was fairly underwhelming -- this is what was included in the $9 tour price.  However, the option existed to order more.  Snake was one of the options, but I wasn't really feeling it, so I just downed my rice and asparagus and random other beefy thing.

After food, we crossed a bamboo bridge to the "zoo."  Basically there were two areas.  One that had several crocodiles that tourists could feed...

 

And another area with a singular monkey.  He didn't have a mate, but there was a random snake stuck in an undersized box next to his cage -- I'm not convinced that the snake was actually alive -- and several chickens in the monkey's area.  Weird...

This marked the end of our tour.  We hopped back in the boat, went back the way we came and stuffed back into the bus.  I sat next to three girls from Scotland that told me that I have to visit Edinburgh.  Who knows?  Maybe I'll head there while I'm in Western Europe.  All in all, a really good day.  I went home and crashed before meeting up with a new friend and her friends at a sushi restaurant.  More about that in the next post...