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Published: July 17th 2008
After spending a week in Ho Chi Minh City getting aquainted with the beautiful city, we embarked on a 3 day, 2 night trip through the colorful Mekong Delta. We booked this trip through a tour agency as it's the easiest and cheapest way to do so. Day 1 started us off in a small boat with about 10 other backpackers - we traveled 3 hours to Mytho, the gateway city to the massive delta. At Mytho we got off and got in these small hand-rowing wooden boats which took us into the heart of the delta...small orchard islets and rural villages all around the tiny canals of the delta. It led us to a coconut-candy workshop where we got to watch the locals make the delicious candies and wrap them up to be sold all over the world and to us tourists. They tasted like Big Hunks, but a lot softer and fresher of course, for those that don't know what Big Hunks are, then let's just say the candies tasted like fresh nougat, but coconutty. After our sugar high and a lunch break, we and one other couple got dropped off at another island called An Binh, where we
Delta River Houses
These are typical houses along the bigger sections of the Mekong. met our homestay family for the night. It was definitely a highlight of the trip as the accomodations and hospitality of the family was tremendous. Included in the homestay, as the tour agency calls it...is a "cooking class," which was really just helping chopping up the vegetables and stirring the stir-fry. Nonetheless, it was a great experience and a lot of fun.
Day 2 was a lot like the first day...it began with a boat trip to another small island where we saw saw locals make rice paper and pop-rice. We then took some more hand-rowing boat rides through mazes of shady canals, lunch at another delta restaurant, and finally ended up in a town called Sadec, where we got on a huge wooden houseboat that would be our lodging for the night. Our houseboat cruised through the night until we arrived at Chau Doc, a city close to the Cambodian border.
Day 3 was an early morning rise which gave us a view to a "floating market," a bunch of boats all clustered together in the middle of the delta selling their goods to one another. We got dropped off in the city to do a quick
Coconut Plantation
Along with coconuts and fish farms; rice, as you would expect, is the other main export of the delta. excursion to a famous cave temple at Sam Mountain, and then went to a fish farm, (bass, catfish, and something else they didn't know how to translate to english), and a local mosque. Some people got off to head for Cambodia, the rest of us got back on the boat to head for home, which unfortunately was a 5 hr. boat ride, then a 2 hr. bus ride, but not that bad at all, since the boat ride was very relaxing. We met a cool couple, Cassie and Yale, who we played cards with...that helped pass the time. Both were from the states, Cassie from Mt. View, and Yale from Seattle. It was a most excellent trip; to quote either bill or ted.
Last thing I want to mention about the trip was one of our tour guides...Stiffler was his name. I chuckle every time I think about him as he was quite a character, as you would imagine a person that gives himself an english name of Stiffler from the movie American Pie would be. He didn't swear as much, but his mischievieous smile, bad jokes, and comments on pretty locals as his ex-girlfriends, summed up that he
was aptly named.
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Joyce Teekell
non-member comment
Thanks for sharing!
Love your letting us "join" in your trip. Your land and water adventures, the local people you have met, the lush, picturesque scenery you have witnessed. etc. all make me wish we had done such travels. Fabulous pics. How lucky you are doing it now! Safe journey. Joyce