Visit to the Mekong Delta, Part One

Still no word from the agency to verify but I think my paperwork was certified last Friday. I heard from another family with my agency that they were told they were certified and I have been told that I am on the same timeline as them, so I can just hope that it is true for me as well.
In the meantime, last Friday after my mother cancelled going to Danang and Hoi An I booked a tour to the Mekong Delta that lasted three days and two nights. I was anxious to see rural life outside of the big city of Saigon. These tours book from every hotel in the area, but they all seem to be run by one tour company. It is very cheap—the main cost was twenty eight dollars which included the bus, boats, and two night’s stay in a hotel. I paid ten dollars extra for a “home stay” the first night, and two dollars extra because the 2nd and 3rd are holidays.

A representative from the tour bus came to my hotel to get me at 7:20 AM. There were about four buses lined up a block or so away and she lead me past the many street vendors to my bus. Not long after we left Saigon the bus stopped for gas. I noticed several truck drivers pulled in around the gas station with hammocks slung under the back corner of the truck to catch a nap, as seen in my first photo.
The next photo shows the boats we caught at My Tho for a fairly quick jaunt around what appeared to be mostly fishing operations. We took lunch in a kind of resort restaurant—the third photo shows the fruits that were offered to us to eat. While we ate a group of men played various string instruments while women and girls danced. I ate spring rolls and we had about two hours on what I think was a small island. There were bicycles available to explore but I took one of the hammocks that were also offered to us and fell asleep. When we left we were paddled two in a boat to the bus.

When we got off the boat we arrived at a coconut candy making factory, I took photos of the various steps. First the coconut is shredded by a machine into a large blue bowl. Second the shredded coconut is pressed and the juice is extracted into a metal bowl. Then the juice is heated with what I think was rice powder and sugar and made into a sticky taffy like substance. This is then poured out onto a slick surface, rolled and cut into strips, then each strip is cut into squares, wrapped first in edible rice paper and then in regular paper, and inserted into a bag with a label with the name of the factory, Phong Phu.

The last photo shows the ferry that we took to Ben Tre. When we approached the ferry everyone had to get out of the bus and walk into an area with pedestrians and motorbikes. As the vehicles started moving onto the ferry a gate was opened and pedestrians and motorbikes made a mad rush onboard—motorbikes took the areas in between vehicles and pedestrians walked up steep narrow steps to a small area on either side of the central space.