Mekong Delta Adventures

We have just returned from the Mekong Delta area after spending the last 2 days cruising around on buses and boats of various sizes in the south west of Vietnam.

We've found out first hand how long it takes to get places by road here, for example 120 km trip can take anywhere from 3-5 hrs.....

Slow transport aside we had fun checking out the floating markets at Can Tho, basically a wholesale market for fruits and vegetables. Hopefully we get some time on the computer today to upload some of the photos.

We also visited a rice husking facility and a small family run business that made rice paper and vermicilli noodles using rice flour, water, tapioca, and potato starch. Rice husks were used to fuel the fire. Nothing gets wasted over here which is encouraging to see.

We visited some smaller islands on the river and saw some of the fruit orchards and tasted jack fruit, dragon fruit, lady finger banana, pineapple, and pimello. Erin started on the pimello and didn't like it and left the rest of the fruit to me, bonus :)

We had the opportunity to see how coconut candy was made by squeezing the milk out of the coconut flesh and then boiling and mixing it up with sugar cane syrup. The mixture is the cooled in strips, cut into pieces and then hand rolled in rice paper and paper. The lolly tasted pretty good.

Our accommodation in Can Tho was pretty basic, but it was comfortable. We got a lil lost wandering around the streets of Can Tho on Friday night, but stumbled upon a market which was interesting. There was lots of fresh, still kicking fish and marine life for sale. We eventually found somewhere to eat and got back to the hotel.

Today we are going to checkout the war museum in Ho Chi Minh, then this afternoon we fly to Nha Trang where I'm hoping to do some diving.

Time for breakfast.