THE MEKONG DELTA

18th - 20th July 2015

We checked out of our room and headed for the local bus station. Our plan was to head south to a city called Can Tho, the biggest city on Mekong Delta. Unfortunately we had an hours ride to a different bus station before we could get on our way. We managed to get the last two seats on a big orange bus and by 4pm we had arrived, avoided the moto mafia and checked into the Xoai Hotel. It was a simple, clean little place just out of the hustle and bustle of the riverside. A few folk we had met had recommended this place, especially their floating market day trip. We booked on for the following morning and also booked a street food walking tour round the city for dinner. 

A young Vietnamese lad called Tran met us and three others in the reception. He was doing the tours to help develop his English which was already pretty good. He has lived round the Mekong Delta all his life and knows a thing or two about the best places to eat. 

Our first stop was called Anh Map meaning Fat Man. Here the speciality is Nem Nuang. Firstly a plate of wafer thin rice sheets is brought out, followed by a plate of mint, lettuce, chive and some other salad bits. This is accompanied by a plate of lotus root, lemongrass, something else and something else pickled in vinegar. The headline act is a skewer of marinaded BBQ pork on a bed of rice noodles and peanuts. The whole lot is ripped, rolled then dunked into a sweet thick soy sauce. It was pretty damn good, setting the bar high for what was to follow.

The second stop was a little bar / cafe on a busy street corner. Helen height plastic chairs and tables were strewn across the pavement filled with locals hunched over drinking beer and watching the world go by. The pavements in the Mekong are definitely for living not walking. We huddled round a little table and ordered a round of beer. Tran thought we should eat like locals and ordered us a gooey aubergine dish cooked on a stove on the table and a side of fried mouse. The mouse actually tasted pretty good, kinda like pork. This was followed by the aubergine dish which tasted fantastic.

Our third stop was a family restaurant that have been making the same dish for generations and are the only place in Vietnam let alone the Mekong serving it. From what I gather pork and various other delights are deep fried twice but without everything tasting sickeningly greasy creating a savoury muffin. Once out the oil you break it up, wrap it in wasabi leaf and dip it in a refreshing sauce with a little cabbage. This was one of my favourite dishes of the evening. It's so popular here that we had to go to the mouse place first to kill 30 minutes as they had run out of muffins and were in the middle of making another batch.

Our fourth stop was a little road side place down a quiet street. Looking like a team of giants on tiny furniture we ordered some more beers, octopus and snake. Snakes are very chewy but once dipped in a lime and pepper marinade they are quite tasty. The octopus was also really good but after the snake it seemed like a tame choice.

Our final bite of the evening was created by a jolly looking lady sat on the pavement with her family and friends laughing and chatting away. She is apparently famous for her sweet sticky rice and has been sitting at this spot on the riverside every night for years. She spooned two kinds of rice, (yellow and red) grated coconut, and loads of other tasty things (some I recognised, some I didn't) into a thick pancake. These were quite literately the best thing ever. I had two and was contemplating a third. 

The following morning we rose at five ready to catch our early boat up the river. We met Hein our guide in the reception. The hotel always employs final year English students to help them with their studies. He was great and explained a lot to us about life in Vietnam and around the Mekong. We cruised down stream in a creaky old wooden boat to the Cai Rang floating market. 

It took about forty mins and soon we were surrounded by boats of all shapes and sizes full to the brim with fruit and veg. Boats selling the same things would clump together and usually would hang their products from a large pole like a flag so you could easily see what was on offer. This market is mainly for retailers who would buy produce in large quantities to sell elsewhere.

After the market we stopped by a family run rice noodle factory. Rice flour is soaked in water for days in massive sacks, it's then mixed with more water and tapioca starch, eventually it's heated and dried into large wafer thin circles, kinda like super thin plastic pancakes. These are soaked and dried again and finally cut into noodles in what looks like a medieval paper shredder. It was an interesting little place and just round the corner was a cafe where we could try the noodles. They tasted like noodles taste... Noodley.

We carried on down stream to another floating market. This one was a lot smaller but was aimed more at the locals buying their daily groceries. Hein pointed to the flagpole of a near by boat and said when there is no produce at the top and dried coconut leaves instead, this is a sign the whole boat is for sale. A boat will set you back $1000 and once living on the river you don't need to pay any taxes. In the end we decided against it and bought a watermelon instead. 

The small canals that stretch off into the rice fields was our next destination. We hopped of the boat as we passed through one tiny village and were told about all the different fruits that were sprouting around us. Dragon fruit, logan, mangosteen, banana flower, lotus and many others, most of which we hadn't seen or heard of before. The heavens then opened on us so sheltering under the boats flimsy canopy we made for a close by homestay for a coffee to wait out the rain. After a short doze in a hammock it was still raining so with a wry smile Hein produced a clear plastic bottle of home brewed banana rice wine out of his bag. He said when you drink tea its traditional to drink three cups and when it's rice wine, four. It was only 10am but what else were we going to do. He taught us a Vietnamese drinking chant... một, hai, ba, yooo! This translates as one, two, three, drink! 

Suitably warm and fuzzy we boarded HMS Creekalot and headed back to the docks. On route we got talking about a range of different things from family life to education. One topic that stuck out was face masks. The whole trip from Nepal to SE Asia we have noticed a vast number of people wearing face masks and had put it down to air pollution. This however was not totally the case. In Vietnam and many other Asian countries people are seen as more successful if they have white skin, so they wear long sleeves and face masks to protect themselves from the sun, some also wear skin whitening cream. If you have dark skin you are seen as poor and probably have to work out in the fields or another low paid outdoor labouring job. He found it really weird to hear that in the west we do the exact opposite with sunbathing and fake tan and that darker skin is seen as more desirable. 

We made it back to the hotel round 1ish and saw two of the guys from the food tour in reception. We decided to sample the pork rolls one last time before catching a bus out to the river island of An Bhin in the Vinh Long province.

We were royally screwed by the afternoon bus to Vinh Long and dropped 3.5km out of town next to two smiling motorbike taxi drivers. With no option we hoped on the back and were whisked away to the ferry terminal. A well dressed happy man called Nam strolled over upon our arrival asking if we wanted to stay in his family's Homestay, according to Nam they are in "Lonely Lannet". We had no plans or clue what we were doing so we accepted. He said his sister would meet us on the other side of the river and show us to their place. Sure enough a slight smiling lady greeted us on the far side. We hopped onto the back of two more scooters and shot off down the tiny roads to their home. The term road was a bit of an overstatement, more like wonky narrow concrete slabs in a rough line. Passing other motorbikes was particularly worrying.

The place wasn't a cute room in a little rustic family home as we were expecting, this definitely was set up for tourists, but it was a beautiful setting. Nam's family did all live and work there growing veg, cooking, looking after the rooms. It really was beautiful but a tad on the pricey side at $24 still it included breakfast and dinner and what an amazing dinner it was. Elephant ear fish from the Mekong rolled up in rice paper with veg and noodles, followed by a chicken dish with rice, and veg soup. We were stuffed and retired to the hammocks for a beer then bed. 

We were awoken by a rabble of cockerels at first light. Today they were particularly excited and made lying in impossible. After winning the battle exiting the mosquito net we were rewarded by a good breakfast spread on the terrace. Fully fed and watered we hopped on two push bikes and went off to explore the tiny paths and bridges that make up this little island. As I said earlier the roads on the island are more like paths roughly two bikes wide, sometimes not even that. The whole place was thick with tropical foliage with fruit and veg growing everywhere. The people living in the maze of waterways, bridges and paths are pretty poor and seem to live mainly off the land and work the fields. However big smiles and cheery kids greeted us every where we went.

After about an hour or so we were completely lost. It didn't really matter, except at one point when Helen got a bee in her bonnet. Literately it got stuck in her hair and stung her head. We decided it was time for a break and were on the look out for a cafe or tea shop. We hadn't seen much for a while as the roads were more like walking paths. We heard someone shouting a greeting to us and whipped rounds to see a middle aged man waving to us with a big grin. He was sitting eating fruit and drinking tea with a quieter older man who too turned and gave us a look of confusion. They beckoned us over, poured us some tea and plonked a big pile of Rambutan fruit (chom chom) in front of us. This was followed by a glass of familiar clear liquid from a plastic bottle. In Vietnam rice wine can be drunk any time of day and these two were getting on it. They loved it when we said một, hai, ba, yooo! This prompted them to pour more and more glasses and it was only 10:45. Suitably wobbly we got back on the bikes and carried on our adventure, the narrow paths looking even more on the wonk. 

At one point we slowed next to a whole family dotted around a clump of trees picking the Logan fruit. I caught the eye of a thin wrinkly old man with a strong chiseled face. He gave me a big toothy smile, hopped up and grabbed me a big handful of twigs covered with Logan fruit. He smiled again, turned and hopped back into the foliage. The fruit was really juicy and delicious. I eventually got the hang of opening and eating the fruit single handedly whilst cycling. 

We rolled back into the Homestay just after twelve to check out. After a quick shower we stowed our bags in a corner, hopped back on the bikes and sped off to a cheap Pho place we had spotted a short ride away. The afternoon hours we spent in a waterside cafe drinking iced coffee and tea until it was nearly time to get the boat back to the mainland, to catch an eleven hour night bus to the Da Lat, a picturesque French hill station.

A few beers in the hammocks at the Homestay, two motorbike rides, a short boat ride and a bowl of noodle soup outside the bus station and we were ready for our first Vietnamese night bus.