Day 9 - 11.10.2016
Our last day on our tour through Vietnam and the last day with our tour guide Quong. We drove 2,5 hours towards the Mekong Delta to experience another part of Vietnam. (Including a happy room stop :) ). Again we got to see the usual images of flooded rice fields and of course, seeing as we are in the rainy season, the sky was just plain grey.
We arrived at the Mekong river surrounded by several boats. Not quite as splendid as the harbour at Halong Bay, but there were enough tourist boats, fisherboats and even larger cruise boats (like the one below).
We headed out in a lovely little touristy boat that had normal garden benches and outside furniture for seats and we floated along the river with our lovely local guide „Funny“ to give us some more information on the Delta.
The river itself apparently isnt dirty but the silt in it gets wirled around and makes it look like it does. Also the tidal effects as well as the rainy season dont really help with ist appearance.
The islands on the river all have different names, such as Phoenix island, Turtoise Island, Unicorn Island and Coconut Island. We stopped off at coconut island to try some home made candy.
The coconut is harvested and its shell is opened. The coconut flesh is collected and it's shavings are gathered into a netting.
The net is then pressed together to extract the coconut milk. About 46 coconuts make a large basin of coconut milk. The rest of the shavings are then used to to feed the animals or for example the coconut shell itself is used for firewood and the small fibres are used for making rope like strucutres, or bags or mats. Nothing is wasted.
The coconut milk is then heated with a bit of malt to combine it properly and to make the candy.
The candy is then added tot he stripey base and formed into long equally shaped sweets, which are then rapped in a layer of rice paper and then in a layer of normal paper. That way you can eat the sweet together with the rice paper without getting your fingers dirty or sticky.
They had different flavours of this candy avaiable such as peanut flavour, coffee and cocoa flavour and some herbal flavours and of course the plain coconut candy too. They also offered other products made by coconuts such as coconut oil, soap and make up and even coconut wine!
After the coconut candy factory we hopped on to these tuk tuks. They are not really similar to the tuk tuks from South and Central America, and are normally used by the locals to transport materials or even live animals. Which is why the locals would look at us in disbelief when we drove around in them instead of live pigs.
We were advised to wear the helmets – not because of any accidents, but because on the way there would be several plants hanging very low just eager to slap our faces. (And they surely did!)
We stopped over at a place where we had some fresh fruits. The best thing about this store were the hammocks on the side – oh how I have missed them!
Back on the tuk tuks we got and our next destination was lunch.
Here they also served a specialty called the coconut rat. Yes, a real rat. It is said that because they live on a coconut palm tree, and they eat mostly coconut flesh, their meat is supposed to taste quite coconutty. I couldnt really tell, since the rat was marinated to an extent where you couldn’t taste the actual meat anymore.
(I am making the face just because it came straight off the grill and it was still very hot to touch!)
As a starter we had elephant ear fish caught from the Mekong River in fresh spring rolls. Yummy!
We also had some fried rice an desert, but I won’t bore you with the details. On the premises they had a so called monkey bar. There were no monkeys present but back in the days, the bridge would have had rails on either side, and you would have to wobble along the bridge with your arms out finding your balance – just like a monkey.
After lunch we got into little boats and were rowed along the Mekong River towards our ferry to the main land. This by the way happens when you are in a boat with loads of other people trying to take a selfie of themselves...
Now we all managed to be in the picture!
And yes – we wore the hats too!
Back on the boat we took back a little souvenir from the coconut island – a fresh coconut including its refreshing juices. After we had finished drinking our coconut we openend them with the machete and had the rest of the flesh.
After we had gotten back to the bus we drove back to Ho Chi Minh City and had some time to spare before our farewell dinner.
The farewell dinner took place at a restaurant called Koto, which is a project that supports street children by giving them the training to work at their restaurants, giving them the chance of education and finding a job after the programm so they can get off the streets and support themselves.
Our set menu consisted of all the dishes of the next photo:
Yes all of it!!!
The cocktails were quite pricey but came nicely presented with ice domes!
Mustard leaf roll w. Australian beef & pickles
BBQ pork stuffed lemongrass w fresh herbs
White cabbage salad w. shredded duck & crab claw herb
Omelette w Vietnamese herbs
Mekong head fish claypot
KOTO special stir fried beef
Crème Caramel
We had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed our meal. Most of the group is going on the Cambodia – we only lost one member of our group – Florin who will be greatly missed in the bunch of knuckleheads!
In honour of Quangs and Florins last day and night, we went out for drinks after dinner to the backpacking mekka of Saigon. The lights never stop flashing, everyone sits outside and there are plenty of drinks and food.
I went back to bed after one mojito, as we had booked ourselves a tour to see the Cu Chi tunnels he next day.
