The mighty Mekong Delta (or how I spent a lot of time on a bus/boat)

Ho Chi Minh City was definitely my favorite big city so far.  We got the same warnings about getting pick pocketed and ripped off by taxis that people give in every big city, but somehow I liked the feel of this city better. I think part of it had to do with the long park running down the main district, and part of it was because everything was walk-able (at least of the touristy stuff).  It may also be that I had amazing sandwiches, pho, and coffee. A great start to my month of nomming my way through Vietnam.

Houses on the riverbank

We decided that we were going to do a trip to the Mekong Delta, where the Mekong River meets the ocean. I had this impression that we would be touring a pretty underpopulated area with smaller villages, large orchards and rice paddies. Lovely sunsets over the river with palm trees and a bungalow. Turns out I was right about the orchards and rice. The Mekong Delta is one of the most fertile areas in SE Asia, but it is also home to 9 out of the 20 million people that live in Vietnam. So that's pretty populated. It's also pretty spread out. As in it takes a lot of time by boat or bus to get around to the islands and cities in the Delta.

Floating market. This boat sold watermelon.

Massive boat full of rice

Smaller boats are buyers. This one buying jackfruit.

I was super glad that I had such lovely company to share this tour with. We saw some cool stuff, but also spent a lot of time chillin' in a bus or boat or waiting for a bus.  We got to see how coconut candy and rice noodles are made. We saw an fruit orchard, made our own spring rolls with fried fish, and saw how fish are farmed on the river.

Rice flour + tapioca flour drying in the sun before it is cut into noodles.

RICE

Coconut candy

Aly's first moto ride!

Different stages of rice production

We also got to see a purse and wallet farm, aka a crocodile farm. I wasn't thrilled that my money went this, but oh well. I felt a bit bad when one of the places was displaying snakeskin belts on the top of a cage containing a large snake.

Hmmmmm...

A couple of highlights for the trip included buying coffee from a small beverage boat on the river while we were on another boat, trying several random fruits from the market, and trying random street food in one of the cities we stayed for the night. Deep fried quail eggs are odd.

Custard apple

Boat coffee!

Yumyum fishy

I'm not sure how they managed it, but we met a couple from England who were on three months unpaid leave and had employers that were saving jobs for them when they came back. If you know of any job in the US that could do that, I'd like to hear about it please. They seemed somewhat surprised when I told them that it wasn't really a thing that happened, at least not with anyone I knew.

The market in Vinh Long City that we spent a significant amount of time wandering through