Mekong Delta, Vietnam ~ Day 4

It had not been lost on me that I still had not secured a tour guide for the Mekong Delta.  My attempts at doing this from home were futile as the couple of companies I contacted were not interested in taking out a solo traveler.  While on the bus from Ho Chi Minh, I emailed Eco Tours.  It was a name I had remembered from Trip Advisor and I am fairly certain I even contacted them as they were my #1 choice but they said they needed a minimum of two people.  They said they would add me to their list should a tour come up that I could join but I never heard from them.  As luck would have it, while traveling on the bus, I emailed them, they emailed back and said I was welcome to tour with them at 5:00 AM tomorrow!  Awesome!  I tell them that I need to be on the afternoon bus to Chau Doc and Eco Tours says they will arrange it all for me.  I ask if I should leave my luggage at the hotel or bring it with me.  They tell me to bring it with me and they will keep it in their office while we are touring.

At 4:30 AM I try my best to be quiet when carrying my suitcase down the slippery marble steps.  Mrs. Ha is up and about (she told me she would be).  Imagine my surprise when I see two motorbikes parked in the living/waiting room area.  This is standard practice in SE Asia.  They even pull their cars inside the living area too.  There's now a hammock set up and I presume this is where Mrs. Ha slept for the night.

I wait outside the guest house and right at 5:00 AM Phi from Eco Tours arrives to pick me up.  He grabs my suitcase and we head out walking a handful of blocks.  I am completely shocked at all the people out and about already.  It might as well have been mid-morning, not 5:00 AM as there were that many people already getting on with their day. Phi stops at a coffee shop and buys me a tea.  It's a great big cup with only about 5 oz. of water in it.  Phi introduces me to Patrick from Switzerland (just outside of Geneva).  Patrick is here for two months. He bought a motorbike in Vietnam and is doing a loop through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.  We head towards the river and wait for Anika and Vidar (from Norway) to show up. It is pitch black outside.  A long wooden boat is waiting for us with an older man at the helm.  Patrick gets on first and is told to sit in the rear seat.  Then I am told to sit in the middle seat.  My luggage is put onto the boat as well.  Then Vidar and Anika sit in the front row.  Phi sits next to me.

We head out up the Mekong and it is black as night out.  I can easily see the bright lights of the huge early morning market where all the restaurants and street food vendors come early in the morning to buy their produce for the day. 

Boating up the Mekong River before sunrise

The boat motor is quite noisy and it's a bit difficult to hear Phi explaining things to us.  I could barely hear him and he was sitting right beside me and I'm fairly certain Vidar and Anika couldn't hear a thing.  Thing is, it wasn't just the motor noise from our boat, there are dozens of boats heading in the same direction as we are so it is very noisy on the river.

Click on the link:
Early morning on the Mekong River

Time to stop for some gas for the boat.  This is our boat Captain.

Our boat captain is busy weaving something.  In time, it ends up that he has made all four of us crowns and bracelets out of pineapple fronds.  Unfortunately, I lost my bracelet along the journey this day and I threw out my crown as I didn't think it would make it through any Customs checkpoint.

We travel 40 minutes and we come to Cai Raing market which was once the largest floating market in SE Asia.  However, changing with the times, it no longer holds that status and the number of vendors are dwindling.

The owners of these boats sail in with their goods and they live on their boat 24/7 in that spot for as many days as it takes for them to sell all of their product.  They are selling to shop owners in the city who come out on their own boats and buy from them.  They do everything on these boats, never leaving them:  washing their laundry, their hair, cooking and dumping their sewage into the river.

Displayed on the pole is what this particular boat is selling:  cabbage; onions, yams etc.

We tour up one side of the floating market and down the opposite side so we can see everything.  Any kind of fruit and vegetable you can imagine is being sold:  pineapple; tomatoes; cabbage; yams; and a bunch of things I have no clue what they are.

We now leave Cai Rang market and sail further down the Mekong to a much smaller floating market.  We are late though so there are not very many boats at all.  These boats return home each and every day.  Every morning they motor to this location and around 8:00 AM they are already on their way home.  They probably start out from home at 2:00 or 3:00 AM to be ready to sell as soon as dawn shows up.

We manage to pull a few things from the water:

Water Hyacinth
The fibers from this plant are used to make purses, shoes and hats and even furniture

This watermelon fell of a boat so we picked it out of the water.

Every so often everything becomes quiet as the boat motor is shut off in order to clean garbage from the propeller.  "Baby napkins" (as Phi called it) was what we in North America refer to as a diaper; plastic bags were a huge inconvenience to the motor as well.

Around 8:00 AM we pull up to a dock and stop for breakfast.  No menu as we all get Pho.  It is delicious.  We eat it while sitting up on the rooftop of the restaurant.

Breakfast (with a view) is served

Next arrives a dish of lovely fruit: the sweetest pineapple, dragon fruit, mango and watermelon.  Yummo!

No time for lolly-gagging, we eat our meal, use the bathroom facilities (no toilet paper!).  I forgot to put the TP in my purse (it was in my backpack) but I managed to scrounge up enough kleenex and napkins for Anika and myself.

Our driver pulls up his boat up to the dock and we climb in.   The seating arrangment changes and Anika and Vidar are seated in the rear, Patrick is in the middle and Phi and me are in the front.

Our Captain and his boat.

We head back in the direction from which we initially came, motoring past the Cai Rang Market.

Caskets

Every so often you spot a flip-flop in the water.  

Those tall sticks are called a Monkey Bridge.
It consists of a pole that you walk on and a horizontal pole (banister) about chest height that you hold on to as you're walking across.  This Monkey Bridge goes from the house to the boat.

See the lady jumping from one boat to another?  This is how we had to get on and off our boat too.
You pull up beside a boat that is already moored and you walk across each boat to get to land or a dock.

Rather than continuing on straight ahead, we take a left hand turn and motor up a tributary.  Traveling the tributaries is my favourite part of the adventure.  Everything is so interesting and foreign.

After boating up the tributary for a bit, the water starts to get rather low so our Captain pulls ashore and we all hop out in order to lighten the load so the boat will sit higher in the water.

In the country side of the Mekong Delta

Deceased family members are buried on family property.
Some plots of land have a lot of these on them.

While on our trek through the country side, we passed by what appeared to be a church service with loud singing.  It was all men, many of whom wore white bandannas around their head.  After we passed by, Phi said it was a funeral.  It was a very unique experience to be walking through the jungle and to hear that music and to witness it.

You can see how low the water receded.

Bridge across a tributary.
You can see the water marks on the posts of how high the water was just mere hours earlier

Trekking through the countryside of the Mekong Delta.  I can't tell you how often I thought "there was a war fought right here in these jungles and tributaries".  I can't imagine how grueling that must have been.

Fruit is readily available

Not much water left here but it will fill back up again in an hour or so.

Phi explaining to Patrick all about the rice field

Beautiful home along our trekking route.  This was an anomaly.  No other home was this nice.

Pineapple takes 3 years to grow to this stage

Once we're done trekking we meet up with our boat driver, get on the boat and go a short ways until we pull up to shore again.  There is a rice noodle factory we are going to look at.  I was surprised to see rice paper and rice noodles drying in the sunshine on mats made of palm leaves.  I don't think that is sanitary in any which way but I guess what you don't know about how your food is made might be just as well.

Rice paper wrappers

Rice noodles

Our Mekong River tour is coming to an end now.  We motor along the tributaries and our captain takes a left-hand turn up another tributary.  How he knows his way around this little canals and tributaries is beyond me.  There are so many of them.  We soon reach the massively wide Mekong River again and travel only about 10 minutes to our landing dock.

We all get off the boat.  I tip the Captain and Phi as it was absolutely the most enjoyable day ever.  It will certainly go down as a lifetime memory for me.

The entire time we were on the river, the Kenny Chesney song  The Life was playing through my head.  

We all walk up to the street and say our goodbyes.  

I need to wait for the shuttle bus in this same spot where we said our goodbyes.  I am on my way to Chau Doc.  Phi is so kind, he waits with me the entire time.  I tell him it is completely unnecessary but he insists.  He even went so far as to reserve my bus ticket while we were out boating the Mekong Delta.  He literally got on his cell phone and emailed or called the bus company, ordered my ticket and told them where to pick me up from.  That is amazing customer service.

~ The end to an absolutely amazing day. ~