Visit to the Mekong Delta, Part Two

On the night before we had arrived in Can Tho and everyone else checked into a hotel. But I was told someone would soon arrive to take me to the home stay. Imagine my surprise when a small boy of around 20 showed up in his motorbike ready to take me and my luggage to his uncle’s boat. What could I do but get on since I didn’t now have a room at the hotel? He put my big backpack in between his legs and I had my daypack on my back and away we went, zooming through traffic, around corners, over bridges. I didn’t know where to hang on and ended up clutching the seat beneath me and pinioning my legs against the motorbike like I was riding a horse. It can’t have been as dangerous as I imagined—I have seen people carrying televisions on motorbikes, young children riding behind parents, I even saw a girl riding as a passenger on a motorbike while she carried a tray with two bowls of soup on it.

Through a couple of alleys and soon we arrived at a boat captained by the uncle and with four other people waiting—a couple from Spain and two men from Holland. It was completely dark by this time and we made our way down the river for at least thirty minutes to the ultra rural bungalow that he has set up. After we checked into our rooms the family served us a meal in an outdoor eating area. We ate elephant ear fish that we made into a kind of sandwich with clear rice paper and various vegetables. The host and his wife’s uncle than sat with us for a long time and told us about life in the village and various customs. The first two photos show the bungalow rooms and my bed, which was surrounded by a mosquito net. It was a fairly pleasant place to stay and was not hot at all. But I had some crackers that were eaten by some kind of animal in the night because I did not have them closed up in my backpack.

I didn’t get much sleep at the bungalow—first of all I felt obliged to stay up as long as the rest of the group did and that was until around ten o’clock, at which time I was practically falling asleep at the table. Then the next morning the noisy boats began moving up and down the river at 3 or 4 o’clock.

We left the bungalow on foot at 6:15 and we were taken by another nephew to the open market. This travel involved going across the river on a small ferry that could hold around six people at a time. In the market women sold vegetables as well as frogs, snakes, turtles, fish, crabs, and other water animals—all of which appeared to still be alive and wriggling around in the bowl or basket in which they were offered for sale.

We left the bungalow at 7 and I had lots of time to kill walking around the market with the same nephew who had taken me by motorbike to the boat the night before. When finally I reconnected with the rest of my tour companions who had stayed in the hotel I had to wade into the river because the boat couldn’t pull up close enough. The sixth picture shows the nephew waving at me as the boat pulled away.

I enjoyed the home stay, and it was certainly interesting to see a Vietnamese family close up. We ate amongst eight members of one family. But it put me out of sync with the rest of the tour—I had to schlep my large bag for the rest of the day whereas the others put their bags in the bus that morning.


The boat carried us around the very interesting floating market. People sold all sorts of things from their boats. The first photo shows a man who sold drinks to the tourists. Then there was a woman who sold bowls of pho—but she had to wait around for you to finish so you could return the bowl. Most interesting were the man and woman on a large boat who carved pineapples into a sort of lollipop for tourists to buy.
The next photo shows a man carrying several heads of cabbage from a big boat to his smaller boat. This is how business was transacted—smaller boats gathered around larger boats.
When we got off the boat we went to a noodle making factory. Rice is mixed with tapioca in large pots and cooked into a thick soup. It is then poured out onto screens and left to dry in the sun, after which it is cut into noodles.


In the next photo a single boat carries over two dozen large bags of rice. A single man hoisted the bags one at a time onto his shoulder and carried them somewhere and returnd a few minutes later for another bag.
We passed many shanties like the one in the next photo, and children always waved and yelled “hello” at us. Everyone was very friendly and didn’t seem to mind us taking their photographs. Many times children did elaborate dives into the water to impress us.
The boat next arrived at Thanh rice factory. In the first photo the contraption that sucks the rice out of the boats into the building is seen. The next photo shows a machine that shakes the rice, followed by a photo showing rice being funneled into a bag. Finally there is a photo of the interior of the factory with hundreds of bags of rice. Outside the factory as we waited for the boat to take us away we bought rice pancakes filled with coconut from a man that is seen in the next photo.


The boat returned us to town and I think the hotel people returned to the hotel to rest and collect their belongings—but I was obliged to sit for almost three hours at the restaurant where we had been taken for lunch. I could have walked around the city and there was a park across the street I wanted to see (it had a huge statue of Ho Chi Minh in it) but I was tired and had both my bags and at any rate I was sitting on the balcony of the restaurant that afforded me a wonderful view of the flowing traffic below, so I just stayed where I was. I had pumpkin flower soup, pictured in the blue bowl. I also have photos of a couple of the people I observed—a man with his two children on a motorbike (he was waiting for his wife, soon she came out and crammed onto the motorbike and all four zoomed away) and a man carrying a large box. I had just seen a man carrying two televisions on the back of a motorbike but I wasn’t quick enough with my camera to catch that.


Finally around 3 the bus came to get me at the restaurant. I was afraid that he would have forgotten about me since everyone else was at the hotel and I didn’t know where the hotel was. I was with a different group of people throughout the entire tour—one group would mix with another for a few hours and then part of the group would be divided off and move on.