Mekong Delta, or How I learned to stop worrying and love the Bus.

So,

A two day, one night tour of the Mekong Delta (at least part of it), mostly by boat.  That's what the brochure says. 

We wake up at 6:15 to be ready by 7AM to get picked up.  We drive around the city on a bus, picking up people, and get dropped off at the dock, to wait for the rest of the group.  We get on a boat, meet our Guide (who never tells us his name, and not until the end of the tour did we actually get to know him... "Like the Marine Corps," our German friends remark), and take a 3 hour boat ride down to a set of islands on the Mekong river (Called the 9 Dragon river in Vietnamese, apparently Mekong is only for tourists..).  The first day, the "tour" elements consist of:

-A honey plant making honey from Longan Trees (Like lychee, amazing honey!)
-A "traditional" fruit plate and music performance (There were some Chinese tourists with us, they tipped, the band played Chinese songs, they started singing, clapping and dancing!)
-A really cool Sampan Boat ride (small, paddle propelled rowboats... awesome!  Old ladies hauling ass down a tiny canal.  Every artery that can be traveled upon is like a major highway for these people!)
-Lunch at an island restaurant (I got the local specialty, of course, fried whole fish, with rice paper/stuff to wrap with.  They even showed me how to wrap the rice paper!  I stopped the lady when she kept wanting to wrap for us...)
-A coconut candy making factory, where "famous" candy was being made!  (doesn't sound too asian...hrm)

The boat ride was cool (well, hot really), as everyone was waving to us as we passed them, and the boat driver was weaving in and out like it was the main roads in Saigon!  Also, tons of dirt got hauled in both directions, apparently for construction purposes... I didn't see many sand brick houses...?

After all of these, we were dropped off at a bus terminal, and then subjected to a 4 hour bus ride to go 100 km.  The villages and towns were cool to look at, and there were vestiges of Communist rule (it's still communist, but you can't really tell in the city so much), but when we waited an hour (on a bus with no bathroom!) to get onto a ferry (People were selling stuff to us on the bus, we had beer from a local store hand delivered!), and finally getting to our "100 star" hotel, as the tour guide said... "And tomorrow, we will see these things, and go on a 6 hour bus ride back to Saigon."

Apparently, most tours in Southeast Asia are like this.  We made friends with some Germans who have been traveling for a while, a Canadian couple, and a guy traveling from Fairfax, VA!  You spend more time on a bus than you do actually seeing things.  Such is life.

After a dinner with our German friends (they each got salad and a cheeseburger.  We had to teach them what a banh mi was, and why to get pho), we slept, because at 6:20AM they were knocking at our door. "GOOD MORNING!"

We stored Banh Mi in the fridge, so this was breakfast.  We walked to a boat, where we went to the largest floating market in Vietnam.  These were cool.  Tons of boats, advertising there wares by long bamboo poles sticking in the air, with what they were selling hanging off of them.  It was a wholesale market, so we couldn't really buy stuff, but it was cool to see the interactions, the huge amounts of produce being transferred, the little boats with pho making kits and random food selling to the bigger boats, and of course, the little kids on boats trying to sell drinks to the tourists.  We took a little paddle boat in 2 groups through the market, and even though we were past the peak time (it gets hot, so they start early), it was still bustling, and very interesting.  Probably the first time we really didn't get paid much attention.

Next, we went to a rice noodle factory, and this was awesome.  I kinda knew how the process went, but to see it was great.  They make a rice paper by steaming a rice liquid on silk, and drying it in the sun, and then they cut it into noodles for consumption.  A long process, but one I wouldn't mind trying sometime.  Sadly, the fresher they are, the less time they last, so nothing I could bring to the states....

After this, we went to a rice milling factory.  Vietnam farms the largest quantity of rice in Southeast Asia, but they can't sell it for much because the quality is lower than other countries.  So most of it is for internal use only.  I'm sure most of the rice gets processed in larger factories now, but going to a working rice factory was very interesting.  The whole place was covered in rice bran, and there were tons upon tons of rice in sacks, waiting to be shipped somewhere.  Of course, being Vietnam, the health/safety attributes of the factory weren't exactly passable, but I'm sure the product was delicious in it's own way.  A lot of the rice seems to be the "broken" variety, which is created when polishing the husk (brown) off of the rice breaks the whole grain into pieces.  It becomes more starchy (sticky) this way, but is considered a lower quality.

This ended the "tour" part.  We went back to where we were staying, Can Tho, and had lunch at "my uncle's restaurant" (the guide said, as the restaurant was next to a giant statue of Uncle Ho Chi Minh).  I started my crazy adventure, and had Snake Satay.  It was good, not much for flavor, but a hearty texture.  It definitely takes on whatever flavors it's with.  (Side note: the guide told me where to get dog in Saigon, but I wasn't up for two new dishes in one day... I'll be back). 

The long bus ride back wasn't too unbearable, but the guide came and sat in the back, and we really got to chatting.  He was asking me English questions ("I want to understand the difference between: Hotel, Motel, Inn" - I thought it was a reference to that rap song...), and I asked about stuff I was interested in (food, communist government, his life). 

Fun Fact: the slang term for policemen in Vietnam is 'Yellow Monkey'

Back in Saigon today, tomorrow Cu Chi tunnels and a flight to the center of the country.  I'm tired of typing.  Good night.