The Mekong Delta was a place that Rich and I were both really looking forward to visiting. With nine tributaries from the Mekong River winding through nutrient rich land, the Mekong Delta produces tonnes of rice in paddy fields, fruits in orchards and lots and lots of sugar cane.
With lives built around the waterways, the Mekong Delta was going to be like no place we had visited before. We travelled by coach from Ho Chi Minh City to My Tho City first of all.
On the way there we visited Vinh Trang Buddhist Temple, set in lovely grounds that included ponds with lotus flowers in and three big Buddha statues, one happy, one standing and one lying down.
We only stopped for thirty minutes to stretch our legs but it was plenty of time to enjoy the peace and tranquility of the temple and it’s surroundings.
After looking around the temple we got back on the coach and continued on to My Tho City. From there we started the first of many boat journeys, heading to Tortoise Island for a tour of a family run coconut sweet factory and a spot of lunch.
The water in the river was a murky brown colour and didn’t look very inviting but there must have been something good in it to make the surrounding land so fertile!
As we sailed through the wide waterways we saw local fishermen in small rowing boats, fishing nets hoisted up out of the water, boats passing by filled with food or other tourists and people bathing in the water. Before too long we found ourselves at Tortoise Island and in a ‘factory’ making coconut sweets.
The whole process was manual, there was no automated mass production line here. The sweets produced from the coconut were toffee like, chewy and sticky. Individually hand wrapped sweets were then packaged up and shipped out on boats to be sold.
We had a tea break after a walk around the factory and enjoyed a lovely glass of honey tea, with honey straight from beehive’s on the property. It was delicious, even in the baking sweaty heat of the Mekong Delta. Rich was daft enough to hold one of the beehive combs smothered in bees. I stayed a safe distance away and used the zoom on the camera to get a photo!
We enjoyed a spot of lunch on Tortoise Island and then stepped into traditional rowing boats, donned our Vietnamese hats and set off on a relaxing journey through the creeks around Ben Tre.
The boat ride was one of the most peaceful things we did in Vietnam. Only the sound of water lapping against the boat could be heard as we slowly glided through the creek, flanked on either side by towering water coconut trees. My only wish was that the boat ride was longer!
At the end of the boat ride we explored a fruit plantation, tasted some of the produce and watched local residents perform some traditional songs. Being non-professional performers the music and singing wasn’t as good as we heard at the water puppet theatre in Hanoi but it was nice to see local people doing what they love to do and taking the time to share their traditional music with us.
Nearing the end of our first day in the Mekong Delta we returned to travelling by coach to reach Can Tho. Here we met Mr Hung and travelled in his motor boat to our homestay for the night. Yes, instead of opting for an air conditioned hotel room, we decided to have a more local experience and opted to stay with Mr Hung and his family!
We were very pleasantly surprised when we arrived to find riverside bungalows for us to sleep in. Mr Hung’s house was next door and once we dropped our bags off in our modest bungalow we headed over there for dinner.
The homestay experience was a family affair, with Mr Hung explaining (in english) about how people live day to day in the region. His daughter showed us how to make crispy spring rolls before we joined his wife in the kitchen to cook them. His mother ran the bar and collected money from anyone who bought cold drinks from the fridge.
We enjoyed a plentiful dinner made by the family and with only Mr Hung speaking english, we used the traditional method of finger pointing and smiling to converse with the other members of the family.
After dinner students studying english at Can Tho University joined us and one of them, an avid supporter of Manchester United was unbelievably excited to meet Rich and I, not because we loved the team, just because we lived in Manchester and had been to Old Trafford!
At the end of the night we were poured a small shot of rice wine. Much stronger than grape wine, Rich and I downed our first alcoholic drink in South East Asia. It was strong, very very strong and didn’t taste of anything other than a burning sensation in the mouth. For the protection of our own health, we politely declined any further shots before heading to bed.
The following morning we woke up to lovely views out across the river from our terrace and ate a basic breakfast of a bread roll, butter and jam at the house before saying our goodbyes and waving farewell to Hung’s homestay. We were thrilled to be able to say we really enjoyed the homestay experience!
An early morning boat ride was a beautiful way to start the day but it didn’t stay quiet for long as we were headed to the Phong Dien floating markets, every bit as busy as a market on land but with a few quirky differences.
Boats were filled with goods for sale and they advertised their goods by hanging one of each item from a bamboo pole at the front of their boat! Buyers in small wooden boats pulled up alongside the larger boats selling produce, hooked their boats on and boarded to select their purchases!
We found that there were mobile cafe’s at the market too as boats stocked with coffee, soft drinks or fruit like bananas and mangoes hitched a ride on our boat whilst they tried to sell us their goods.
The floating market was a hub of activity and central to life living on and around the river. Taking the motor boat to the floating market and browsing the goods on each boat was as normal for them as hopping in the car and browsing the aisles at the local supermarket for us.
We left the hustle and bustle of the market and cruised through the waterways to a rice noodle factory. Once again it looked nothing like a factory and was an open area under a bamboo roof.
Making the rice noodles was largely a manual process which included a lot of hard work to get the rice made into a runny rice mixture with potato flour and water before steaming it on round cotton cloths over boiling water.
Once cooked they looked crepe like and were lay out on bamboo mats for four to five hours in the sun to dry. Once dry, these were then hand fed through a cutting machine to make the noodles, packaged up into one kilogram bags initially and then grouped into five kilograms bags that were put together for sale at the market.
No part of the rice was unused during the process, even the rice husk that is discarded at the beginning of the process is used to fuel the fire for boiling the water. It’s a very low waste industry.
Before heading back to Ho Chi Minh City we had one final stop at another fruit plantation. This one was lovely to walk around, with water trenches fed by the river feeding the plants.
To cross the trenches they had bamboo bridges around the plantation which were smaller versions of the ‘Monkey Bridges’ used around the Mekong Delta. Monkey Bridges are built using single pieces of bamboo tied end to end, usually with a piece of bamboo used as a handrail for balance.
Walking across them is very much like walking a tightrope and having seen enough fruit plants we entertained ourselves trying to walk across the small bridges without holding on at all for balance!
We had a long five hour drive back up to Ho Chi Minh City but experiencing the Mekong Delta was worth it. It was most definitely unlike any other place we have visited and it was amazing to see how life is led amongst the tributaries of the Mekong River. We will never forget our time spent there, especially on the small rowing boats wearing our Vietnamese hats!
We spent our last night in Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City before heading to the airport and bringing our Vietnamese adventure to an end. We loved Vietnam and felt like we had seen many different sides of it.
The differences between each of the places we visited was vast and goes to show how some areas of the country, like Ho Chi Minh City are so developed and only a few hours away from the less developed, manually intensive ‘factories’ in the Mekong Delta.
From the traditional city of Hanoi in the north to the more westernised city of Ho Chi Minh in the south, we loved everything and looking back on it now, we even loved our time on the sleeper trains – what an experience!
Lambs on the loose 
Wonderful pictures again! There’s been a tv programme with Sue Perkins travelling the Mekong river which we thought you might like to watch when you get home, so we recorded it for you. Travel safe and see you very soon. Love M n D xxx
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