Floating Market- Can Tho, Vietnam

August 29, 2014

The highlight of our two-day Mekong Delta tour was to visit the floating wholesale market outside Can tho city. 

Starting at 4 AM, hundreds of people flock from many provinces to this place to sell their products, mostly produce, to retailers all over the area. 

Boats tie up to each other while they do business and exchange goods. 

Potential customers know which boats sell which types of produce either by the small potted plants on their roofs or the bamboo poles with varying types of produce tied to them and propped up like a flag.

Many of the families live on their boats and we are told most children don't go to school because they are constantly on the move. 

Smaller motor boats and paddle boats drift by selling everything from cuts of meat to prepared soup and iced Vietnamese coffee. 

Most of the non-motorized boats are propelled by crossing wooden oars. 

Offerings of incense, food, alcohol, and cigarettes to the shrine inside the boat appeases ancestors and the Budda.

This family selling a mystery root vegetable were particularly interesting to photograph.

They had an efficient, three person system of packing, weighing, prepping, and selling on different parts of the big, wooden boat.

Mekong Delta Adventures Vietnam

Mekong Delta Tour 

8/28/14

After doing some research we decided the best way to see the Mekong Delta was to buy a tour. Neither of us had ever been on a group tour before but we wanted to give it a shot so we signed up for the two day trip with a local tour agency. For $22 per person (including lunch, hotel, and all transportation), we figured there wasn’t much to lose!

Some eye-catching mosaics at a Buddhist pagoda...

We were in a group of about 20 other Vietnamese and international tourists led by our guide, “Hi,” who had a nervous giggle and spoke so quickly we could barely understand him. The tour felt a lot like a school field trip. 

Parts of it were totally ridiculous, like when they loaded us all into little horse-drawn carts to “see the village.” We literally trotted down one street for about 2.5 minutes, slammed on the breaks, spun around and trotted back to the place we left from.

But we were glad to be able to see so many little things we would’ve missed on our own like a honey farm where the bees raised on nectar from lychee flowers and the honey tasted just like the fruit. We had a honey tasting with tea, bee pollen, and also tasted some banana wine which were delicious.

We also got to see how coconut milk is produced and watched a row of women individually wrapping coconut candies by hand at lightning speed. 

Once outside of Saigon, we travelled between destinations sometimes by large boat and sometimes by small boat. These 6 person wooden canoes were especially fun to ride in. One person at the front and another at the back guided us through canals too narrow for larger boats to travel through with wooden oars. 

As we were entering the boat, we were each handed a Vietnamese hat to wear during the trip much to the disappointment of Chris who, like me, feels the only people who should be wearing Vietnamese hats are Vietnamese people and not tourists. I was already wearing a hat so Chris was on his own with the goofy hat...

The noodle factory was really interesting too. Here we learned how rice grains are crushed into flour and combined with cassava into a batter which is then spread paper thin onto large circular burner like a crepe. The burner is stoked with rice husks...

 After it cooks for a few seconds, it is carefully removed with a special woven reed, bat-like tool and placed carefully on a wicker stretcher to cool and harden in the sun before being run through the noodle cutting machine.

The noodles are then ready for packaging! We tried some in a pork soup... delicious!!

And of course, no Vietnamese noodle factory would be complete without grilled rats and a petting zoo python... 

The tour also included a trip to a fruit orchard where we walked through rows of dragon fruit. They looked like something out of Doctor Seuss and somewhere between a tree and a cactus. 

Turns out the fruits come in two varieties, white flesh and red flesh, the red being the more sought after for its sweetness. The papaya was grown on the farm too and was AMAZING.

Our tour ended with a monsoon. Chris and I were two of the lucky few who ran through the streets from the boat dock and made it to the restaurant before it started pouring but many others in our group were not so lucky. 

The grill master made do under an umbrella. 

Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam - Our Secret Lover

August 24, 2014

Our last few days in Cambodia were a bit harrowing due to some really tough situations arising in the village and a really big night in a really wacky border town. We were SO pleased by Vietnam from the moment we arrived. People are helpful, the streets are clean, the place even smells nice. 

We have been staying at Spring House Guesthouse which we HIGHLY recommend. We got a VERY clean, nicely put together room with a double bed, flatscreen TV, mini fridge, AC, hot water, and it's quiet and safe for $18.

We dropped our baggage and hit the streets, attitudes a hundred times better. 

There's Banh Mi (Vietnamese sandwich) stands on every corner, pho restaurants on every-other block, the street-food vendors have their meats in covered containers and actually USE soap to wash their dishes- it's like heaven. One can eat very well for $1.50 - $3 per meal. 

We both have a guilt-filled love affair with Vietnam.

Chris had a banh mi sandwich and two bowls of pho for dinner on the first night.

8/25/14- We woke up happy to be in Vietnam and walked around town quite a bit, stopping periodically for delicious Vietnamese food. We visited the War Remnants Museum, a passionately anti-US account of the "American War" (and who could blame them?) which housed some US military equipment and many photos and stories. 

I suppose it's interesting to see the American military stuff as a Vetnamese person, but, having seen it all before, I was sad to find no Viet Cong equipment. There was, however, a very cool exhibit with anti-war posters from all around the world.

There were some really cool photojournalism exhibits...