After taking a flight from Hue to HCMC (formerly known as Saigon), we checked into our hotel and had dinner at a nice French-inspired restaurant. After 5 weeks in Southeast Asian, rice and noodles were starting to wear on us.
Our guide came to pick us up early the next morning to take us to the Mekong Delta. Starting in Tibet, the Mekong River flows through Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and ends in Vietnam - the waterways were used quite a bit during the first Indochina War with the French and during the Vietnam War with the Americans. Nowadays, the rivers are used for simpler things such as fishing and transportation. And to carry tourists like us.
We boarded our boat and took a ride down the river:
A village along the river:
Typical boats:
The river is used for just about everything requiring water - cleaning clothes, bathing, rinsing fruits/vegetables, washing dishes, etc...yet we couldn't help notice all of the trash:/ This photo was taken at high tide, it was much worse the next morning during low tide.
Our guide took us to a little village where coconut candy and puffed rice cakes are made and we were able to see the process.
Cutting the coconut candy - it resembles taffy:
Puffing the rice in a huge wok - they use sand (the black stuff) in the pan so the rice doesn't burn and then sift the mixture to remove the sand from the puffed rice. Looked way too complicated.
The puffed rice was then used to make sweets resembling rice krispy treats, but not as tasty.
We headed to our hotel in the afternoon, walked around for a bit, and went to bed since we had an early start the next morning.
The following day, our guide wanted to leave early so we could experience the floating market. Many people live on their boats in the Delta selling various fruits and vegetables to other boats and they advertise by putting whatever they are selling on a pole for easy viewing:
Chaos with multiple transactions:
We cruised along the river a bit more and then headed to lunch where we had an entire elephant ear fish delivered to our table, a specialty in Delta, to make spring rolls with pineapple and cucumber. The fish is quite deceiving as only a very small portion is edible. The spring rolls were pretty good though.
We headed to our hotel in the afternoon, walked around for a bit, and went to bed since we had an early start the next morning.
The following day, our guide wanted to leave early so we could experience the floating market. Many people live on their boats in the Delta selling various fruits and vegetables to other boats and they advertise by putting whatever they are selling on a pole for easy viewing:
This boat is selling a variety of produce as noted by multiple items on the pole:
Chaos with multiple transactions:
We then headed back to HCMC to our hotel to pack since we were leaving Vietnam the next day.
6 comments:
I love the chaos pic.
My grandma would take her clan of grandchildren to visit Mekong once a year since it's my grandpa's birthplace.
"What do you mean that waterhole by the bridge is our toilet, gramma?" Ahh...memories
yeah, i think i'd be done with rice and noodles after 5 weeks of the stuff, too. way to suck it up!
um, no pun intended. maybe.
Those boats look like a headache. What an interesting way to hock your wares.
It's amazimg how differemt life is outside of our borders.
pretty nuts how the river really is used for everything, huh? we felt equally as surprised in peru.
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