In spite of a somewhat restless sleep last night (our bodies will probably take another day or two to adjust to the time change), we rose early for breakfast at the hotel and met our tour guide for the Mekong Delta at 9am. The city teems with people and motorbikes and bicycles, cars & trucks come at you from all directions. There's a buzz and energy that is very different than you find in NYC, San Francisco or London. I don't know if it's all the brightly colored shops, the cacophony of languages or the buzz of the motorbikes and clack of cyclos but this city hums. The shops and cafes were wide awake & doing a brisk business when we left but not before Kelly and I had an opportunity to take a quick walk in either direction on the street where our hotel is located to get our first glimpse at Vietnam in action. It's so lively, the people are friendly and the architecture is fascinating. There is no concept of zoning and as we drove out from the city south towards the delta, we passed brand spanking high rise apts next to heavy industry factories, run-down street side cafes, bakeries and building product retail shops. The stores featured ladders and new doors, stainless steel metal work, floor tiles and bricks for sale next door to t-shirt shops, variety & grocery stores. Just about everywhere were places to buy Vietnam whisky and all the cafes featured row upon row upon row of hammocks, lined up waiting to be used - either from too much work or too much whisky is anyone's guess but according to our tour guide both are common pasttimes. Development seems pretty prevalent and we saw a lot of new buildings going up as the city spreads farther out into open land. How much planning has actually gone into this development is not clear - buildings don't seem to be going up with any sense of orgnization but there's a good number of cranes in the sky, especially in the city outskirts.The Mekong Delta area wasn't anything like I expected - although I wasn't really sure what to expect. The river widens to several main tributaries cutting across about 50 miles. The water is brown and muddy and dredging was occuring to keep the silt from building up. The area is low and flat, with islands and rice paddies everywhere, what looked like banyan trees and coconut palms grow right up out of the water's edge.
Kelly & Barb board the boat from the mainland
Maneuvering the inlet waterways of the islands
The heat was stifling and sweat rolled off our backs in spite of the breeze on these various boats. The air was thick with palms and other exotic trees overhead. The islands a criss-crossed with very narrow tributaries - in some places it was difficult for two canoes to pass one another. It was difficult to not think about the US soldiers trying to fight a war in this environment 40+ years ago. Between the brutal heat, humidity and the dense vegetation, it's not a place a non-native could easily survive. At various stops we walked thru some residential areas which you'd be hard pressed to call villages - they were really more like family compounds, with each family supporting themselves by selling Vietnamese items to the tourists thru makeshift retail shops - chopsticks, fans, various types of bags and clothing, embroidered goods, sandals and shoes, lacquerware, teapots and other pottery. Of course Kelly & I were in heaven, shoppers that we are, but the guide didn't let us veer too far off course. Families also support themselves with little restaurants and cafes. We had lunch in an elevated thatched structure high in the tree tops and later at another family bee-keeping operation & cafe were serenaded by several Vietnamese women singers and male accompanists playing traditional stringed instruments while we sipped honey tea.
Fish for lunch
We also ate luscious tropical fruits, some of which we'd never seen before. Dragonfruit, which is the size of a large orange has an irregular green skin with odd-shaped appendages growing off it and a bright red inner skin protecting a creamy white sweet insides with lots of tiny black seeds about the size of those you'd find in rasperries interspersed inside. We also had some very small sweet watermelon, papaya, pineapple, mangosteens and rambutans (similar to lychee fruit which grow in the north of Vietnam). Sweet fruits and honey tea
As we started to leave mid-afternoon the sky darkened and we could see a storm brewing off to the south. It hit with some force before we made it back to the mainland but thanks to boat driver, we managed to keep dry under some disposable plastic ponchos.
and unexpected rain!
Rainstorm
Source: http://www.traveljournals.net