Jan 14th. Mekong River

Jan 14^th – Mekong Delta

Today is a long day as we travel south west into the Mekong Delta. We’re picked up at 09:00 by Dung and our driver. The journey out of the city is much like yesterdays in that there are suicidal motorcyclists coming at you from all angles. Fortunately our man knows how far to push and hasn’t killed anyone yet – least not to our knowledge.

Slowly the urban sprawl makes way for fields of crops. I’m not sure what many of them are, other than some are paddy fields. We’re intrigued by the large burial constructions in the middle of some of the fields. Later Dung explains that these are illegal as the Party way is cremation, but old ways linger and the burial places are put where the family feel closest to their ancestors and well, I suppose if you work in a paddy field a lot, then that’s where you want your ancestors to be as well.

We reached a toll road and speed up. Lane discipline is along the American lines in that you don’t have the concept of an overtaking lane and you just stay in whatever takes your fancy. When you want to pass someone you overtake or undertake whenever required.

Honey Tea Tasting

We arrived at My Tho and made our way to the waterside and the ferry port. In this part of the Mekong there are 4 islands; Unicorn, Tortoise, Dragon and Phoenix. We took a water taxi over to Unicorn Island and headed for a honey tea tasting. This was surprisingly pleasant, we also tasted some Royal Jelly and pollen. We decided not to buy as some stuff we can’t take home and not sure if we can take it into Cambodia either. We started to walk along a path into the middle of the island. Dung pointed out some of the fruits hanging from the trees from Water Coconuts, Dragon Fruit, Kumquats and Kasava at the end of the path we were met by a horse draw buggy. When I say horse, I really mean pony as this was little fella. Still, he managed to pull us along at a fair pace. We were dropped off outside a property where we could see some other people. Here we had some refreshments of tea and fruits. There was pineapple, papaya, watermelon, rambutan and longan – all very delicious albeit that some were quite fiddly to open. Then we had some singing from the locals. Dung explained that it was the sounds from Hue and often performed in the Royal courts there and still today by professionals, which he was quite clear, these were not. We enjoyed their rendition of “if you’re happy and you know it”.

Paddling down the creek

We then walked down to a creek and got into a canoe that was paddled by what I guess was a husband and wife team. We were told not to put our hands outside the boat, and for good reason, they bashed into almost every boat coming the other way! Along the way we got to taste water coconut which was growing in the trees along the banks. From our drop off point we walked back to the water front and met up with the water taxi we’d come over on. To get to it we had to clamber over some other boats. He took us back across the river passing some floating fish markets and dropped us of at Dragon Island where we were picked up by 3 tricycle rickshaws. These took us through the back streets and alleys and dropped us off where we having our cookery lesson.

After we’d cleaned our hands our teacher showed us how to make pancake rolls. I think, overall, we got the hang of making those although there were some dodgy looking ones. While we were doing that she made the fire up in a small burner using sticks. She’d already prepared some pork and prawns as well as a mix of egg, coconut milk and turmeric to make the omelettes. She did the first one, and then Kim had a go before me and then Tamsin. Our teacher commented that I had made the best omelette and that I should make the last one. We sat down to a fine feast that also included a chicken leg, Dung joined us. We were also joined by three small hungry cats that we’d seen around. There was so much food we couldn't

Are men better in the kitchen??

finish it.

We headed back to the waterfront on our rickshaws and waited for the ferry back the mainland. This ferry also carries bikes and motorised trikes so we had to be careful not to get nudged into the river as we walked down the jetty. On the other side our driver was waiting at the top of the jetty. Two of us snoozed with full bellies on the way back.

One of the kitties