After saying our farewells to Lizzie and Andy, we set out for our trip to the Mekong Delta which will take us all the way to Phnom Penh in Cambodia. The first two hours are spent in a cramped (Vietnamese buses seem to have even less leg room than ones back home) and packed mini-bus. We transfer to a narrow covered boat just large enough to accommodate one row of chairs down each side and begin our tour of the Mekong Delta. Our day’s itinerary includes a visit to a sweet-making factory on one of the islands; a change to a smaller boat to negotiate some of the numerous channels that make up the delta; a honey farm which turns out to have only one hive, but where we get the opportunity to have our photograph taken with a python, for a fee of course; and after lunch a journey by sampan further into the channel network for a fruit dessert and a very average performance of traditional music. The day is rounded off with a 3-hour bus journey to the ferry crossing and Can Tho for our overnight stop. We have booked a homestay for tonight, but by the end of the day we are beginning to wonder what to expect as the guide seems determined to do her best to put us off – lots of mosquitos, may be flooded, 30 minutes by motor bike in the dark …and we can’t take our luggage with us! To cap it all it’s raining when we reach Can Tho and there is only one motorbike driver. It’s when we find out that the journey also includes a boat trip as well that we start to wonder what else might await us that we have yet to be told about. At this point we decide to wimp out and stay put at the hotel.
The Mekong is swollen and, even under today’s clear blue skies, the water is a murky brown due to recent flooding. As we explore the channels there is a distinctly tropical feel; giant palm fronds grow directly out of the water arching over our heads. Through the jungle houses perch on stilts some little more than huts others more substantial, some constructed of wood others with simple palm covered walls and thatched or corrugated roofs. As we chug by children wave and shout hello. The scenery is fantastic, but the tour turns out to be a tad too commercialised with souvenir stalls at every stop.
The coconut sweet ‘factory’ is an interesting stop but nothing like any factory you may envisage! Set in tropical jungle, it is housed in an open-sided building with a palm-covered roof. As well as women busily producing sweets, there are stalls selling a range of locally-produced souvenirs mostly made from coconuts which grow in abundance here. The production line is no more than 20 feet long and almost everything is done by hand including the preparation of the coconut mixture, the cooking over an open fire stoked with coconut shells, shaping and cutting the sweets, wrapping and packing. All the while tourists are milling around. The sweets, though are delicious, and we do our bit for the local economy and buy a packet.
Our Vietnamese guide is called Hong, pronounced ‘Howm’ as she is at pains to explain to us, although we are still not 100% sure we have caught the pronunciation correctly – the subtle sound distinctions of this tonal language are seriously difficult to grasp. The five tones can give five different meanings to the same word. Hung is a cheerful guide with a rather bizarre sense of humour. She’s a bit of a shouter though and has a tendency to drop the ends of her words and which leads to some communications problems as most of us can’t understand here explanations.