Mekong delta swelter!

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As we set off in the bus the next morning 'Hairybody ready? Phat boy slim group, let's go! Cool Banana! Yes!' we reflected on how quickly the two weeks had flown by, this being our last full day together before we all headed off in different directions, some carrying on into Cambodia, me and a couple of others off home, one going on a farm stay for a few days and a couple going for some rest and relaxation on a lovely Island.

For our last trip we were heading off to the Mekong Delta region, very humid, hot and jungley. We heard some fascinating snippets about the region from Phat, who had grown up in the area before moving to Ho Chi Minh City (where he said he couldn't sleep at first it was so noisy!). The Mekong Delta, about 75km from HCMC, now has a population of about 18 million. As little as 25 years ago there was no electricity and therefore went to bed early, hence the population explosion 😉 They have just domestic TV here, whereas the rest of the country can get world wide cable TV which I found fascinating in a communist run country. They do however influence the media heavily with the newspapers and tv stations controlled in the main by the government, though some do seem relatively outspoken in the criticism as I saw in one of the articles I read in an English Language daily Vietnamese paper. The internet has something called the Bamboo Firewall with the government trying to restrict access to certain websites, including facebook which seemed to be a bit eratic. So far Phat seems to have been able to add a few things to my wall though so it obviously isn't that effective!

We also found out there is a local wine made with snake's blood that the men drink and the women supposedly benefit from! The area is Vietnam's biggest producer of rice, having three seasons of three months a year (the fourth being the rainy season which brings in beneficial silt). The main river is the Cu Long translating as 9 dragons and this has its origins way up in Tibet. Now there is a 4km new bridge, but before they had this the only way to cross at this point was by ferry making it difficult to get quickly to hospital in Ho Chi Minh City. The Australian government donated money for a second bridge. Incidentally I hadn't realised that Australia and New Zealand had been involved in the American war in Vietnam. My group was surprised that more wasn't made of this in the history portrayed by the museums and talks we had. A third bridge over the Cu Long river, built by the Japanese and Vietnamese jointly, collapsed in 2010 killing quite a few people. The cause was put down to scimping on the cement mix putting too much sand in!

As we drove along we noticed there was a distinct lack of mopeds and Phat explained that they weren't allowed on the toll motorway. He also said 'On the highway we can go at 200km an hour, rock and roll!' 😉

We pulled up at a jetty come souveneir stop (there is always a souveneir stop nearby and some of our group were shopaholics with a keen eye for a bargain!). We were off on another boat trip this time to one of the four My Tho islands in this part of the Mekong Delta. They are locally known as the 'Coconut Islands' due to the huge concentration of coconut trees cultivated here, but their single names are Con Lan (Unicorn Island), Con Long (Dragon Island), Con Phung (Phoenix Island) and the one we would be visiting Con Qui (Turtle Island).

Our first stop on the island was to visit a coconut candy making place where we saw how they extracted the coconut milk and juices, boiled up the syrupy mixture and then lay it out to cool off. We then watched the ladies moulding the gloupy thick mixture into lengths and chopping them into little bite size bits which were then wrapped in edible rice paper. We tried some and mmmm it was good. We also had a few shots of the coconut liqueur/wine that they make on the island. I could get into this whole coconut theme big time. They also had a pet python and some of us had a go holding this impressive snake. It was very heavy and so soft to the touch. Phat said they only need one chicken a week for food and when asked when it had last eaten he said 6 1/2 days ago! We then went to see a demonstration of rice paper making. The ricey mixture (kind of pancake batter consistency) was spooned out onto a hot surface into a circle shape then flipped over. The cooked papers were then put to dry in the sun. We tried some of these and some of the fried ones that go all crispy. Tasty!

We then all piled into three kind of tuk tuk vehicles, basically open carts attached to motorbikes, and whizzed off around the island along their little concrete tracks similar to those we'd been along on the motorbike tour near Hue. We had to keep ducking and diving to avoid leaves and branches hanging over the tracks, so if you were at the back and couldn't see them coming you basically had to just copy whatever the person in front did. Synchronised tuk tuk ducking! We had a little stop - happy house time - and were given some of the local fruits to try - pineapple, mango, jack fruit (like we'd seen near Cu Chi) and cinnamon apples (or saborilla). The jack fruit were a bit rubbery in texture and had a distinctive kind of taste, hard to describe. The cinamon apples were like pears in texture and had a honey/caramel flavour rather than cinamon, well to me anyway.

We headed off on the crazy tuk tuk tour again, through more twisting lanes, getting whacked in the face by leaves, until we eventually arrived at the dinner stop. The fish eaters got to try the local delicacy of 'elephant ear fish', so named as its shape is like that of an elephant's ear. They were served by ladies who made little rice paper rolls with strips of cucumber and pineapple, noodles and the elephant ear fish. I had vegetable noodles instead. As we were finishing our meal someone came over from one of the other groups eating there and asked if anyone wanted to try the snake blood wine as they had some left over. Two of our group went to have a try. When they came back they said it was ok to drink at first but had a terrible after taste and spent the next five minutes guzzling beer to try and get rid of it!

After our meal we had yet another type of transport to try out - this trip must win the prize for the greatest variety of ways of getting from A to B of any tour I've been on - this time we went on a relaxing and peaceful meander in wooden open canoes paddled from the back by some expert boat handlers working in the sweltering heat. Did I mention it was extremely hot and humid and we were literally leaking sweat in buckets? Guess that's the Mekong Swelter Delta for you! We came across some lads swimming in the water, considering crocs have been see here this seemed a tad unwise (or thinking about it, was that just another Phat 'joke' - 'only kidding haha!'😉. We emerged from the little water-coconut tree lined waterways onto the huge Cu Long river where our big boat was moored waiting to take us back to the mainland and the end of our last official day trip in Vietnam.

We just had a last meal at the top of a grand hotel resaurant to enjoy with a summary from us all going round the table to see what our highlights of places and activities had been. It was amazing reflecting like this on all the places we had been, the sights we had seen, the great activities we'd tried and it was interesting to see how people enjoyed different things the most. We were all in agreement about two things however, that Halong Bay had been the best place by far that we had visited (not surprising seeing as it is one of the seven natural wonders of the world) and that Phat had been the best tour guide ever 😊

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