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Published: August 6th 2007
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Following the success of the previous day’s tour, we spend our last full day in Vietnam on another tour, this time heading to the Mekong Delta. Leaving our hotel at 7.30am we reached Cai Be about three hours later, and were taken by boat to see the nearby floating market, in a backwater off the main river. This was like a wholesale market on water, where local producers load up their boat with their produce and sell it on to distributors, who take it by boat or truck back to their town or village to sell to local stores. It was amazing to see the shoreline crammed with rickety looking wooden houses, which looked similar to, but even more makeshift and temperamental than those we had seen along the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok. We were then taken to several small producers who made products out of local ingredients such as coconut and rice. We bought a packet of coconut lollies and they were surprisingly good! We also saw someone making pop rice. For those of you who haven’t ever heard of pop rice (like we hadn’t), its basically just like pop corn, but made from rice. Watching the rice pop
(which we have uploaded as a video) is pretty cool, but unfortunately it didn’t taste as good as it looked.
After this brief stop we hopped back on our boat and headed back out towards the river. Crossing the huge river took quite some time, and it was simply incredible to see such a vast volume of water, and so much action with such a variety of boats, carrying everything from petrol, produce and tourists, to huge mounds of soil, among other things. In fact, it literally made Australia’s mighty River Murray look like a trickling creek. Having eventually crossed the river, we reached another backwater, which its self almost became a trickling creek, as the rapidly changing tide meant the water level was getting lower and lower. This was a little scary, as neither of us much fancied the thought of being stranded in the middle of what was soon to become a muddy swamp. Our guide directed some of the heavier people towards the front of the boat in order to lift our hull, and we even got a tug from a passing boat. However, the low tide also made for some interesting viewing, as we could
Waiting for the Tour Bus at our Hotel
Alicia is looking suprisingly happy considering the time see the locals putting up their fish traps, to catch unsuspecting fish as the water level quickly dropped. Dogs, chooks and ducks were similarly cunning, in searching the freshly exposed river bed for trapped fish and insects. Even a group of three young boys were bobbing through the shallow water, picking out and collecting shrimps with their bare hands. Despite the low tide, this backwater was still bustling with many boats coming and going, yet amongst all the action there was a very calm feeling to this place, with almost every boat having a hammock with someone sleeping in it. What’s more, we could easily tell that this place was very poor by western standards, with houses made from tree branches and old tin and boats made from what looked like the dodgiest of materials, another testament to the Vietnamese people’s resourcefulness. Yet all the locals were relaxed, happy and friendly enough to wave to us on our passing tourist boat. We really got the feeling that life for the locals in this area was really good, even though their average incomes were only a fraction of those in Saigon, as our tour guide had informed us.
Luckily we
didn’t get bogged, and we made it to our destination from where we rode bikes for about 5 minutes to the restaurant where we ate lunch. Lunch was interesting. Being a pre-set meal as part of our tour, we were worried they would serve something that we wouldn’t like and we’d go hungry for the rest of the day. We thought that was exactly what was going to happen when the waitress placed a whole grilled fish on our table. Luckily this was just one part of our meal, as we were also served with ingredients to make our own Vietnamese cold rolls, as well as rice served with meat and vegetables. After lunch we had the chance to stroll in a nearby bonsai garden, where Josh very courageously held a python, even if it had been domesticated. After this we returned to our boat, again by bike, from where we were taken back to Cai Be. Here we spent a couple of minutes browsing the local market. This was quite interesting, as the streets were lined with people selling fresh produce from the region. From here we returned by bus to our hotel in Saigon, where we spent our
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