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Published: September 7th 2015
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Monday, 6 July - walked into Hoi An to do some more sightseeing. Visited the Market which is a brilliant insight into how the locals live and eat. Early in the morning they set up their stalls with fish, seafood, chicken, pork and vegetables. It is a riot of colours and frenetic activity. First we visited the Minh Huong Ancestral Hall which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was built by Chinese settlers in the late 18th century who obtained vietnamese citizenship to worship their ancestors and who had founded the Minh Huong village. Deities worshipped here include the Thien Hau Holy Mother, the God of Earth, and the God of Fortune. The temple also used to serve as the administrative office of the Minh Huong village council. Even today the temple is used by 60 families of the Minh Huong village.
From here we visited Phac Hat Pagoda, which has a colourful facade of ceramics and murals and an elaborate roof with snake-like dragons. There’s a huge central courtyard containing hundreds of potted plants, statues and bonsai trees.
Then it was time to walk back to the hotel for a shower before our Jack Tran Eco tour
of a Rice farm and water buffalo encounter. Lily was our guide and official photographer! It started with a cart ride pulled by our lovely Water Buffalo who just learning to pull a cart with a traditional wooden yoke. At the farm there was a day nursery and the last few children were being collected. Then we rode bareback through paddy field - afterwards we drank Green tea with Ginger in a coconut tea set. We learnt about how rice is grown and harvested and how little the farmers get for their product! Rice is called ‘white gold’ in Vietnam and has a link to the Sanskrit name ‘Dhanya’, meaning: "the sustainer of the human race", which is also the name given to rice in India. It is the staple diet of the Vietnamese and its often said that all their three meals in a day consists of "rice and something else."With a population of 90,549,390 inhabitants, Socialist Republic of Vietnam is the 14th most populous country in the world, and is densely populated with 259 inhabitants per km2. The most densely populated areas are in the low-lying deltas of the Mekong River in the South, and the Red River
Freshly caught
The ladies go down to the sea at first light and wade out to the boats as they arrive. They often come to blows with each other to secure the best fish! in the North. Millions of people live in areas that are prone to flooding, which makes Vietnam a hotspot for the impact of climate change, and most notably, sea-level rise. In these areas aquaculture is developing during the rainy seaso with the farmers setting aside paddy fields to the production of river prawns and catfish which is far more lucrative than rice production.
Rice production in the Mekong and Red River deltas is essential to the food supply in the Vietnam and to its economy. Vietnam is the second-largest exporter of rice worldwide after Thailand and the world's seventh-largest rice consumer. The Mekong Delta is the heart of the rice producing region, of which 1600 species are grown there, and is known as the 'Rice Bowl' of Vietnam. Here are 17 million people of whom 80% are involved in rice cultivation. The delta produced a harvest of about 20 million tons in 2008, about a half of the country's total production. The rice bowl has assured food security to its population whose 75% of daily calories are met by rice, which is also the staple diet of nearly 50% of world's population of 6.7 billion people. In 2010 however,
the area was hit by a heatwave - 35 degrees C for 3 consecutive months which caused a 25% drop in production. Vietnam's land area of 33 million hectares has three ecosystems that dictate rice production. These are the southern delta, where The Mekong River dominates rice coverage, the northern delta, which is subject to the tropical monsoon with cold winters and the highlands of the north where they grow upland rice varieties. In the north they produce 1 crop of rice per year, in the central areas 2 crops and in the Mekong there can be 3 harvests. The main types of rice are the normal white rice, wild rice, which is healthier, jasmine rice, which is expensive and beyond the means of most vietnamese, sticky rice and broken rice.
Mr Nimh was our host for Rice farm part of tour. He showed us how to thresh the rice to separate the grains from the stems and then how to riddle the rice to remove the husks. He then demonstrated how to prepare and cook rice properly - I expect his wife was thinking he doesn't normally cook! We ate our rice with crushed peanuts, also grown by
the farmer, salt and sugar. It was really nice! When we went back to the hotel Tom asked Lily for advice on where to go to buy a bottle of gin and some cans of tonic. Rather than tell him she insisted on buying it for him and sped off on her shiny red scooter and within minutes was back with Vietnamese priced gin not the inflated Tourist priced one. Such nice people! Today I fell in love with water buffalo, they are so gentle and able to pull some seriously heavy weights - as demonstrated in the photos! But I also have a greater respect for a bowl of rice, something we take for granted but which is the result of the immense hardwork and dedication of Asian farmers who receive so little for their labours!
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