While we were in Ho Chi Minh we booked another day tour to the Mekong Delta, I love reading the itinerary for these things, it is like reading an estate agents description of a house they are trying to sell. This trip sounded nice, a lovely boat ride, a day away from the city and I quote " the climax of the trip will blow the sweat of your forehead, " well done deal, that sealed it for me.
After a very hot couple of hours in the bus we arrived at Mytho, where we caught the boat to take us down the river and to the islands.
I am not sure why those three girls decided to sit on two seats, there was plenty of room.
After a very short while we landed on one of the islands, where they had a lot of bee hives. The next thing we knew we were sat at tables with a variety of honey based products in front of us . A lovely cup of honey tea was also made and given to each of us. After being given time to buy things, which we didn't we headed off.
We were then led to another area where there were loads of market stalls and randomly a snake that you could hold, so David did. We were surprised when we were not asked for money for holding it. There were some nice handicrafts on the stalls so I did buy some things there.
After a short walk over the island, which is beautiful we found more tables set out , which we were asked to sit at. Once sat, plates of fruit were brought out to us, we were just waiting for the sales pitch when a troupe of singers appeared and proceeded to perform. After they were finished we clapped politely as you do, and then the donation baskets were placed on each table, so we escaped a fruit sale pitch only to be faced with a basket. David enjoyed trying all the fruit though.
After another walk we were led to a small river where we got to go on a rowing boat back down to the main river and our boat. Now, this in theory should have been lovely, as you can see it is beautiful and it started off nice and calm as we floated through the water coconuts. However, I had the misfortune of sitting right in front of the man rowing, who spent most of the trip poking me in the back asking for a tip. He didn't get one.
After we got back onto the bigger boat we sailed to another island, here they showed us the process of making coconut candy . There are many steps and this was actually quite interesting , but even as we listened we were mentally bracing ourselves for the next sales pitch. They had a special offer on, buy 5 get one free. It was nice but not that nice.
Cooking the coconut milk
Rolling out the finished product.
At the same place they were selling rice wine with different animal bits in it. There was a large bottle of rice wine with a dead snake in it, which a lot people tried. We didn't try it, one of my rules in life is don't drink anything which has a dead body in it !
Another boat ride led us to where we were having dinner. Oh my lord it was awful, it was supposed to be pork, rice and greens. The pork was so small and tough, David couldn't cut his so gave up, and I couldn't get it out of my head that it was really dog, so that was left. I had a couple of spoons of rice, so did David. There was another option, fried fish which is in the photo above. This looked more ornamental and wouldn't look out of place on a mantlepiece.
After this we headed back to the boat to start our return journey home. After about ten minutes on the bus, it stopped and our guide told us that he had to leave us now but somebody else would come and he disappeared. Well, we sat and we sat and you could see the bus driver was getting fed up, then the driver switched off the air con on the bus, took the keys and went and laid on a hammock by the side of the road. At that we all looked at each other and thought what was going on, so we all got off as it was getting hotter and hotter on the bus. Most of us mingled at the road side but David decided to join the driver and eventually so did about 6 others. The thing is those hammocks belonged to the person whose building we were beside, which was nothing to do with us or the tour. They had hammock squatters. We ended up being stuck at the side of the road for about 45 minutes and some of the group became very angry at the driver, but it wasn't his fault , he didn't know what was going on either and you could tell he felt a bit awkward being left with us.
Eventually we got back on the bus and headed back to the hotels.
On the roadside were many rice paddies and dotted about in them were graves. We asked the tourist guide about this and she said there were no regulations over there about where you can bury bodies. People see rice paddies as a good place to be, linked to good fortune so will often bury relatives there. The white and red shapes you can see below are graves.
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