Mekong River Basin Tour (Thursday)

We start with a little geography lesson.  Vietnam is a long skinny country, and about 1/3 of the way up a major river that flows from the north divides at a fork and makes a “Delta” in the middle.  This was the target of our tour today.

There are 9 outlets for the river after it divides and flows toward the ocean, which they refer to as the “9 Dragons”.

Enough geography.  Our guide and the driver showed up promptly at 8:30 as arranged to pick us up.  We climbed into his Chevrolet Aveo and headed out of the city.

Rush hour traffic in NYC got nothing on this.  The scooters swarm like gnats in July and here we were without a can of Off!  It’s interesting to ride in this traffic.  Intersections, other than major ones, are largely uncontrolled – no lights or signs.  People just kind of slowly merge together like a school of fish, and if you want to turn across traffic you just signal and start to slowly make your way.  The assumption seems to be that smaller vehicles (i.e. scooters) will move around automobiles and trucks.

Some major intersections have lights, and other lesser ones have a traffic cop standing on the corner with an orange flag on a stick to signal “stop” and “go”  They stand up on the curb, not in the flow of traffic.

We went across the street to the ATM to get more Dongs (5,000,000 Dong is about $250.00 US) and a guy in a military uniform finally either got tickled or tired of waiting and walked us across the street when he figured out we were waiting for a break in traffic and that just wasn’t going to happen.

The trip to our starting point was about an hour and a half – think Hickory to Salisbury, or Oklahoma City to Lawton.  Once we got there, joy of joys, we got to get on a boat.

Our itinerary described the days events as a 3 hour boat trip.  Generally, we have adopted the position that we do not get on boats unless they have (a) a bathroom; (b) a bar and (c) attendants other than the boat owners.  For a 3 hour trip, though, it’s got to meet those criteria, right?

Wrong.

Boat #1 had a motor.  Our guide bought our tickets and we boarded to cross.  This involved going down a concrete walk to concrete stairs and stepping across onto the boat.  It was big enough that it normally held 25 or 30 people, although we three were the only passengers this time around.  We were just going about 500 yards across the river and could see the landing point, which obviously had electricity and plumbing.

We can live with that.  Disembarking the craft was similar to getting on and no big deal.

The first stop on this “island” was a honey farm.  The bees like a particular type of tree that grows there and the flavor infuses into the honey.  They have a pretty good market selling Royal Jelly (the stuff that makes queen bees, nothing by Smuckers) and after you get a chance to hold a comb (which the bees seem to tolerate, although they aren’t thrilled about the process) they take you to a little café area to sample their wares – green tee with honey, royal jelly, candied Ginger, peanut brittle, etc., with the opportunity to make purchases afterward

We bought some and have hopes that it will make it through customs.  We shipped it back home yesterday with extra clothes and stuff we no longer need and are tired of hauling around.

After our tea break, we were then walked through the village that exists on the island, with lots of hand-crafted goodies, not to mention more than a few that are undoubtedly imported from elsewhere.

Locally, though, we saw how they were making coconut candy from coconuts that actually grow on the island.  Although there is electricity to the pavilion that we were visiting, other than powering a mixer that runs about 90 minutes per batch everything else seemed to be low-tech.

They open the coconuts, drain the milk, carve out the meat (although we didn’t see that happen and I would have liked to – how the heck do you get the coconut goodie away from the shell??).  At the end when they’re cooking it, they use the shell / husk as the fuel for the fire.  All very eco-friendly, as long as you don’t count the smoke from the fire.

Once the candy is cooked, it’s poured into molds to harden into long strips, then the strips are removed and laid out on a cutting board to be cut into uniform pieces.  These are then wrapped in edible rice paper, followed by a more durable wrapper, all done by hand.  Then they’re packaged up.

It seemed to be very much a family business.  A package of candy was 30,000 dong ($1.41), and if you bought 5 you get one free.  Who can pass up a deal like that?

Our guide kept pointing out the various flora indigenous to the area.  Yeah, yeah – pretty plants.

We rarely buy souvenirs, but if there is something that is unique, hand crafted and obviously local we do make exceptions.  In this case, there was a young lady cutting out flat wooden “post cards” (for lack of a better name) that were remarkably intricate.  We know they were local, because we saw her making them there.  The craftsmanship was remarkable.

When you’re walking through the village, you see a juxtaposition of old and new.  There are some houses that are little more than hovels, while others look to be new and modern.  We saw people in them – because they are very open and not air conditioned – watching cable television and using the internet.  Vietnam is supposedly one of the most wired countries in the world, and we found high speed wireless available for free most everywhere.

After a bit – another tea and fruit break, this time with live entertainment.  Our guide got us a hot drink that had some kind of tofu or soybean based solid mixed in with the tea and was VERY sweet.  It was also hot and served in a plastic cup and you ate it with a spoon.  Along with that were half a dozen plates of different fruit, some of which he had to teach us how to eat.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get the names of them in part because you can only ask someone to repeat themselves so many times before it becomes rude.  There was one about the size of a grape, though—you peel off an outer shell that looks kid of like a fuzzy orange peel and the fruit inside is clear with a huge seed in it.

Don’t eat the seeds.

During this break, we had live entertainment.  Two guys, one playing the guitar and the other playing something that looked more like a banjo, played for vocalists.  Then a group of young ladies came out and sang “If you’re Happy and You Know it Clap Your Hands” both in English and Vietnamese. 

It was like a throw back to vacation bible school. 

By then, it was time for our return trip.  We’d figured out that this wasn’t a “3 hour boat ride” and were thrilled over that.  It was a 10 minute boat ride across to an island, 2 ½ hours there and then 10 minutes back.  Or so we thought.

Turns out there was another boat involved.   This one was long and skinny and sat VERY low in the water.  As you went down the steps to board (no hand rail) there were lots of boats cued up to take on passengers. 

No bathroom.  No bar.  No waiter.  Oh, and the “drivers” were bailing water out of some of them.

We got on without falling in to be eaten by the almost-extinct crocodiles we’d learned about on the way over.  (That’s why the boats have eyes painted on the front – to scare away river monsters).  We had two ladies, one in the front and one in the back, to power ours.

We were going down a canal with two-way traffic that was about 10 ft. wide.  There was a lot of “bumper boat” action going on, and we were cautioned to keep our hands inside and hold onto the yellow rail rather than the top of the boat.  This was good advice.

I wish I could say this was a relaxing boat ride that leisurely floated down a lazy river.  But it wasn’t.  It had all the relaxation of 5 people riding a tandem bicycle down a mountainside, and 2 of those people – the biggest two – had never been on a bike before.

After 20 minutes or a thousand years, I can’t remember which, we could see the open water again.  We’re going to pull up to one of these nice concrete docks and get out, right?

Nope.  We headed toward open water.  In a canoe that had seen better days.

Our guide, who is nonchalantly talking on his cell phone, gives some directions to the lady up front, who kept trying to smile at me reassuringly.  It was going to be over soon, though, and we would turn the corner and be back where we started.

Except we didn’t.  They were apparently going to row us across the river somewhere.  Or maybe out to the ocean.  Who knows.  I was hearing the theme song from “Titanic” as we rocked in the wake of bigger boats going by.

About this time, the guide finished his conversation on his cell phone and there was an interchange between the captain (the lady up front) and him.  Of course, this is happening other than in English, but again some things need no translation.  She clearly said, “What do you mean we’ve rowed these guys to the wrong (#*@&$(@#* dock??”

So we turned around.  No small feat in a small canoe, loaded to capacity, in a busy river.  Still weren’t going to a dock, though.  Nope, we went to a metal pier away from the shore, where a couple of other larger boats were tied.  We hoisted ourselves up onto the dock – fortunately it was close to high tide and not a big jump – and stood there for a bit until the guide made another call.

Our boat will be here in a minute.  And it was.  But did it tie up on the vacant side of the dock?  NOOOOO.  It tied up to the other two boats already there, so we had to climb onto boat #1, cross over to boat #2 and THEN crawl onto our boat.

Oh, and as we’re getting out of the canoe, I’m told that I need to tip the captain, presumably for rowing us into the lane of traffic and safely returning us to something that wasn’t floating, at least for a short period of time.

How much is that worth?  The answer is that it’s worth whatever happened to peel off out of my clip first.  I don’t remember.  It could have been $5.00 or $50.00.  At that point, I just wanted out of the canoe.

We made it back across the river to where we started to find that our gate was occupied. 

No problem.  They just made another floating bridge so we reversed the process of crossing the various boats back to dry land which, blissfully, wasn’t moving.

“Lunch!” the guide announced.  As if we hadn’t nibbled all morning.

Lunch was at a place just up the road that was very nice.  Many of the meals we’ve done are “set menu”, meaning you don’t get to choose.  No substitutions.  This is lunch.  This is great, because there is always way too much food and it encourages us to try things we might not otherwise pick.

The main course here was “Elephant Ear Fish”.  We’d seen one of these at the honeybee farm, in a tank with some other fish.  They confirmed that he didn’t have a name, but had been caught I the river and was someone’s lunch, still on the hoof.

Ours was much smaller, but was still prepared whole and looking at us.  Most of the time, we’d rather not have that intimate a relationship with our meals.  We know where they come from, but would just as soon they weren’t looking at us during the meal.  This one was not only there whole, but was served (fried) on a platter that stood it up between a couple of pegs like it was still swimming.