Today was a day-trip to the Mekong Delta. This involved a bus trip for a couple of hours (nearly three) to get to our destination. We boarded a boat that would take us around the Nine Dragon's River (what the Mekong is called in this district). This is Tham's home district, though her home town is 200 km away.
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| Scenes on the way to the Mekong Delta |
The tour was a quite long boat trip on the river, which was surprisingly large (to me). It was a very peaceful cruise, started by Tham explaining the area to us. The photo of her map-demonstration technique is stolen from AK but absolutely sums up the earnestness with which she led our tours every day.
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| Tham filling us in on the Mekong Delta |
The first stop along the way was at a coconut candy 'factory' where they made coconut candy. We had a demonstration of how to shell, crack, grind and milk a coconut and then saw how the milk was made into a nougat/fudge style candy. We were offered a taste of a range of coconut-based candies. They were very yummy!
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| Fishing nets for local families | One of the locals |
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| Trying to capture the weather and the river | A local family's set-up |
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| Husking the coconut | Grinding the flesh from the nut |
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| She's squeezing the milk from the ground flesh | Cooking the milk, with ginger and other flavours |
After the candy factory, we rode in tuk-tuks around to a small river, where we were loaded into small boats for a paddle down one of the canals or tributaries in the area around which the local people live.
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| The tuk-tuks | These are not sophisticated vehicles! |
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| The boats we rode in | One of our guides/captains |
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| Scenes of the canal/river we floated down |
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| My tour mates in other boats |
From there, back into the boat for more cruising on the river to the restaurant where we had lunch. The speciality for this place was "elephant ear" fish, so called because it is served standing vertically in special racks. Apparently, serving the fish lying on one side and forcing the diner to turn the fish over to get to the other side brings about bad luck (boats capsize). Deep fried banana flowers, followed by the fish (served to roll into summer rolls), fried rice, and pineapple for dessert. A really lovely lunch on the side of the river.
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| Deep-fried banana flowers | Elephant Ear fish |
Another cruise down the river back to our departure point. Then a bus trip back to Saigon. Overall, it was a very quiet tour, not as busy as previous tours, but still enjoyable.
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| Scenes on the river going back | A boat of passing locals,
who threw us a bag of rambutans |
Dinner was at KOTO (Know One, Teach One), a special restaurant that takes in street kids and teaches them cooking, hospitality and English and sets them up for a life that they cannot otherwise have hoped to have. It was set up by an Australian-born Vietnamese man (https://www.koto.com.au/). The meal was lovely and a great capstone to our tour as everyone will be departing tomorrow. Gwyn presented Tham with the card and tip that we'd collected as a group. She is a truly wonderful tour leader and a bright and engaging woman.
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| The group at dinner | Presenting Tham with our thanks |
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| The beautiful TA Thi Tham |
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