Mighty Mekong and its many channels was up next during a three-day trip of the delta. The scenic region is a wonderful green and fertile land with lots of people. While the second largest city in Cambodia is home to 140k people, it looks like every town in the delta has at least 200k citizens. First stop was the pagoda at My Tho with its smiling, happy Buddha. Might be nice for tourists who are on a two week holiday in Vietnam but unfortunately I am spoilt already and so it was nothing special.
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| Happy Buddha. Look at the people for comparison. |
After that we started our trip on the lower Mekong River (Bassac River) with a nice boat ride. A simple meal for lunch was included and after another boat trip we visited a coconut candy production facility. Coconut candy is a speciality in the region, made from coconut milk, caramel and sugar. You can buy them with the original taste or with some added flavour like peanut or chocolate. I decided to go with sweet durian flavoured candy. And don’t worry it doesn’t smell like durian. The candies are all hand made in that work shop and taste really nice. I will try to keep some for my guys back home but I cant make any promises. The owner produced a python from somewhere and I thought I ought to take a pic, especially since this one has a descend size.
After some excellent royal jelly tee it was time for my personal highlight of the delta, a ride in a wobbly 4-pax-rowing boat in one of the many small channels. Beautiful green area with lots of banana and palm trees.
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| getting ready for the boat ride |
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| Blog's background picture during my time in Vietnam |
Unfortunately, the rowing trip was over soon and we went for a break with fruits and some traditional Vietnamese music. Like the Khmer music there is not much change in rhythm and so the music appears a bit monotonous after some time. I am sure that it is most difficult to sing, but just not that appealing to me personally.
We stayed at a nice hotel in Can Tho for the night and I had a lucky draw with my room mate as he was a really nice Spaniard from Madrid, who is also on a long trip. We went for dinner and saw a nice restaurant with small BBQ-grills on each table. We ordered the “hot pot” for two people but it turned out the hot pot is used to keep a noodle soup warm. Well, better luck next time.
I had the chance to see a floating market in Bangkok but I thought there are better ones in Vietnam. Maybe you need to visit it before 7 am or it was the wrong day of the week because the market didn’t seem pretty lively to me. Anyway, it gave me some nice pictures.
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| Phong Dien floating market |
Rice noodle production facility was next on the itinerary. I don’t want to write factory because you might get the wrong idea. The facility has maybe 7 employees and there is no heavy machinery as most things are hand-made. Not sure if it an official shop at all since it had a bit of a back-ally feeling to it.
Chau Doc, just next to the Cambodian border was home for our second night. On our way there, we stopped at another pagoda set in the hills after having had a look at a crocodile farm. The farm’s object is to produce expensive hand bags, belts and wallets from real crocodile leather. Definitely illegal back home.
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| Pagoda near Chau Doc |
With 2 million the Cham people are a Muslim minority in Vietnam that used to have its own kingdom back in the days. We visited a small village just next to Chau Doc by boat that specialised on clothes. Once again all textiles are hand-woven but still affordable for Westerners.
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| Cham village |
On the third day our group has shrunk to only 8 people and we could switch to a mini bus which is much faster in the teeming traffic. Still the vehicle can only do 30-50 km per hour on average and so it takes quite some time to get from town to town.
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