The Mekong Delta

Sorry for the delay in blogging! We have been jumping around Asia a lot and I haven’t spent much time on the ship lately.
 On my second day in Vietnam, I left at 8 am for the Mekong Delta area with 17 other SAS students. After about 2 hours on the bus, we arrived in Vinh Long where we boarded a small boat with chairs along each edge. There was a roof to the boat, and eyes painted on the front. We piled in and took off with our tour guide Duc (pronounced Duke), and cruised down the river making tiny waves. A woman on an equally small boat came up along the side of ours trying to sell water bottles she had piled up. She also handed out fruit that our tour company had purchased from her, which included lychees and some other type of fruit/nut, and a lot of coconuts. They were DELICIOUS.
We cruised a little further through hundreds (not exaggerating) of small wooden boats, each one piled up with different fruits, vegetables or grains to sell. In the backs of bottom of these boats are little windows that would give you a glimpse into the way these boat people lived. Their laundry would be hanging across the top on little clothing lines, and their beds would consist of hammocks that swung as the water rocked. They ALL wore Vietnamese hats that you see on the little kids in “It’s a Small World."
We pulled over and piled out of the boat. Our guide led us down a dirt rode between tin walls with huts behind them. We turned into one of the gaps and walked into an open area with palm roofs and little pillars holding them up. There were some little picnic tables around. Chairs in Asia, by the way, are TINY. Like little stools that toddlers would sit on at home. So strange. And they rarely have backs on them. Without realizing it, we’d ended up in a rice factory! They showed us how they made extremely thin rice paper by steaming rice milk, how they made popped rice (like our pop-corn) and rice krispie treats from that. I bought some Jasmine Tea and we all tried snake wine. I’m not sure what exactly the wine is extracted from, but it was this dark murkey liquid in a large clear jar with snakes piled up inside of it. They were coiled around the edges, and some seahorses were visible as well. We had tiny half-shot glasses and tried it. SO crazy tasting. Almost like whiskey, but different.
We left the rice factory and went further up the river to an elementary school and pulled over. There were children in the courtyard doing gym exercises. Some of them sat on mats and put their feet up against each other, and all the other kids would line up and take turns jumping over the man-made hurdle. So funny. We joined in and they laughed at us. ☺ We left the school and walked along the river through a produce market with things I’d never seen before. Everyone was lazing around on hammocks, which was pretty cool to see. They were so laid back. No one was working, and people just relaxed until you wanted to buy something and they’d do the deal and go back to their business. So much different than an American lifestyle.
Our boat met us and took us up to a little blue cottage on stilts that sat on the water, which would be our accommodations for the night. There was a boys room and a girls room. Each room had 10 beds, 5 lined on each wall. There was a mosquito net above each bed, and a $1 bill patterned towel folded up. I went for a walk along the river with 3 friends, walking through peoples front yards along a path and enjoying the view. The quiet sounds of the river, the atmosphere of relaxed Vietnamese life.. it was so serene.
We headed back around sunset and sat around the common area. It was all outdoors – our rooms had holes for windows but no glass in them. The doorways were left open and the common area was lined with hammocks. As I strolled through the cottage-area, I heard a terrible shriek from one of the girls and went running towards our room. It was Cassie, who said she’d just seen the biggest bug of her life. We all clammered into the room to see what the commotion was about – it was a spider that was LITERALLY the size of my entire hand when it’s spread out. It’s body was the size of my palm, the color of a cantelope, and it had crawled from her bed up the wall of the light blue cottage. Mr. Miao, who owned the cottage, ran over and splatted his hand against it, failing to squish the spider as it scurried away. I couldn’t believe he went after that thing with his bare hand. I’ve never seen such a big spider in my life. For those of you who know me – this is not something I handle well. It took a lot of time for me to calm down after that.
There were some round tables where we sat, and the owner of the small cottage had brought in some entertainment for us. Two performers, a man and a woman, sang songs about a love story of a city man coming to the small farm area of a woman he loved to be with her. There were some instrumentalists in the background strumming 1-string instruments with a wide variety of notes. I’d never seen those before.
The surrounding trees lit up with fireflies as we reorganized the tables for dinner. One of the things we ate was called a standing fish. It was literally.. a standing fish. I will include a picture. My table of 6 had no idea how to tackle this thing placed in front of us, and Duc had to come over and strip the top fin off the fish so we could start to dig in. It was delicious. We had tiny little fried spring rolls which were pretty great too. I journaled in a hammock for a bit after dinner until most people had cleared the area and gone to bed. There were a few people who had stayed up drinking beer and playing cards, so I joined them. We also broke into some local rice whiskey, which was SO uncomfortable strong, but delicious. I made sure to tuck myself into my mosquito net well before falling asleep.
We woke up in the morning and had breakfast served to us by Mr. Miao around the small tables. After a little while, we got back into our boat which came to pick us up. It took us to an area called Vinh Long, where we then boarded a bus to Can Tho. Upon arrival, we went to the local markets. I bought some little gifts and typical Vietnamese straw hats. I wore mine for the rest of my trip. They’re so great and I understand why they wear them there after trying one on! We then went to check into Ninh Keiu 2 Hotel. After lunch, we got onto a tour bus and drove around for 7 hours, stopping at little rest stops on the roads. Little huts and shacks lined the roads, or buildings that had wide open spaces on the bottom floors to set up shops, etc. There were always hammocks in these and they served delicious teas and coffees.
Later on, we stopped at a monastery, which was pretty incredible. There were a lot of men playing volleyball, which were monks during their recreation time. A lot of monks were still clothed in their bright orange attire as it was near time for their prayer when we arrived. There was a call to prayer made by one man, and monks flocked to the central temple. I stood in there while they prayed under shrines to Buddha and lit candles. Hearing the sounds of all of their voices coming together in devotion was pretty incredible. I got some videos of this too, so I am excited to share when I get home. It was a pretty profound moment and I felt really lucky to be able to see something so tucked away in Vietnamese culture. I got to meet some of them before they prayed, and though their English was very broken it was still pretty neat to try and communicate. We’d hold up however many fingers were necessary to show our ages, and teach each other basic words like “Hello,” “Goodbye,” and our names.
We went back to Can Tho and got on a HUGE boat with 3 stories for dinner. As we were served food, the boat left port and we floated around on the river enjoying the sounds of the night, some musical performances and the lights of the city. We had a hard time communicating with our servers, but a man named Kenny who had a Vietnamese background was sitting at the next table. He is American and lives near Sacramento. He helped us communicate a bit and we had a really good time. We got up in front of the crowd and sang Build Me Up, Buttercup into the microphone as Kenny had encouraged us to do so. Because they didn’t have the music to play with it, they played techno. It was a disaster, but I can’t say it wasn’t a good memory. We got a lot of blank stares from the crowd, and hastily returned to our table afterwards.
After dinner, we went back to the hotel to freshen up. There were 5 other people in our group who wanted to go out, so we left the hotel and found a bar to go to. It was SO bizarre. The bartenders were all dressed up in cowgirl attire, and there were saloon doors in every doorway. There were darts, and even though I tried to play.. I couldn’t figure out the word for “darts” in Vietnamese and no one could understand my hand motions. We bought a bottle and sat around a table in the outdoor patio area after playing a game of pool. Locals flocked to us. We were so unusual, and we were in a pretty small town, so I think it was mostly their curiosity that drew them in. We made some friends and learned how to say “1, 2, 3, Drink!” in Vietnamese. Going out an having a good time is a universal language, and it’s a pretty neat thing to realize that language barriers don’t really matter as long as everyone wants to have a good time. We went inside and danced a ton to Miley Sirus and Hilary Duff song remixes. The chick spinning had some music I’d never heard before, and was actually really good. After a while, we went back to the hotel on motorbikes. The roads were empty, so we hollered the whole way home.
In the morning, we woke up and went to a local market on the river after breakfast. We all boarded a little boat and it took us out to see what the local market was. The market is hoppin’ between 5-9 am more than any other time of day, so we lucked out. We pulled up to a pineapple boat, and some of us boarded that as the couple selling pineapples cut them up for us. They had left the stalk on the bottom of it and cut it into quarters so we each held onto it like corn on the cob and chomped in. I think this is the last pineapple I will ever have eaten because I think I am allergic to them. I don’t know why.. I just don’t feel right afterwards, and usually my tongue gets itchy.
We went back to the market for lunch, and were given little fruit bowls of mango and dragon fruit for dessert. After this, we all got on the tour bus to head back to Ho Chi Minh. It was an incredible trip. The people of the Mekong Delta area were so friendly. A lot of the English-speakers had British accents because they had been taught English by British people. I noticed this also in Spain and India, which was interesting because it was like a double accent. I feel pretty lucky to have seen this place.