Cruising the Delta

Last month, I joined some other women from HCM for a day trip down the Saigon River in to the Mekong Delta area. A really interesting, but noisey, hot and long day on our 5-star (not!) boat.
All along the way, there were boats overflowing with piles of bananas, coconuts and other fruit and many barges carrying huge piles of sand and rock.

More like a highway than a river.

Many of the boats looked like the operator's homes - washing hanging out and pot plants around the deck etc. Perhaps not a bad place to live when compared to a number of the ramshackle buildings along the banks of the river. Some looked as if just one wave would knock them over, sitting in the water, perched on their skinny stilts and leaning against their neighbour!

I am sure that things are changing, but it's pretty obvious that lots of rubbish (read sewage?) goes straight into the river still. Not a pretty colour. (...but I'll keep on Glen's back about this and maybe GHD can help make a difference!)

Once down the main river we were transported through the delta in small boats along a series of canals to the local farms where they grow coconuts, bananas, and other fruit. The boats were rowed by the locals who crouched on deck at either end. There was quite a number of boats maneuvering around each other down these narrow waterways.

For reasons I don’t know (but will find out) all the boats here have eyes painted on their bows.

The farming areas we went to, which were quite densely vegetated still, would have once been full of monkeys, cobras and pythons. But the impact of over-hunting for years has had its toll - not to mention the little issues of Agent Orange and napalm during the American war.



One of the things that they make locally is a coconut candy which we saw being made the traditional way - I’m sure most of it is done in factories somewhere else now and that this set up is just for the tourists who these people rely on for extra income. They also make coconut oil which is a very good moisturizer apparently.
At lunch they served us a traditional meal of elephant ear fish deep fried and served displayed on a plate of greens sitting up as if it was still swimming around. The waitress then pulled it apart for us with chopsticks. They also served the normal spring roll type things and soup.


And yes, this is another picture of my favourite snake - I won't be going back for seconds in a hurry!