15th February, 2017

Our last full day in Vietnam and it is hard to believe that we have visited three countries already, two of them in some depth. We had a full day ahead of us though, as we set off south west to the magnificent Mekong Delta. I suppose I imagined it would be mangrove swamps and some rice paddies and a few people, but how wrong I was. It is certainly the rice bowl of Vietnam and arguably of SE Asia. The Mekong (not to be confused with the Mekon of Dan Dare fame) is some 4000 km long, starting in Tibet and is the third longest river in Asia (after the Yangtze and Yellow rivers). It deposits huge quantities of silt which makes the region particularly fertile and it provides one third of the country’s agricultural output. It is also densely populated with towns and villages and housing and people and motorbikes and boats all jockeying for position just as elsewhere in Vietnam.

It is a good hour plus from HCMC, but I enjoyed the bus on a mission and we did stop for refreshments where there was an example of a ‘monkey bridge’ at the cafe, though strictly speaking you only have a bamboo pole rather than a whole palm tree to walk on over the many ditches and rivers and inlets that are everywhere you go. Luckily there are several much more substantial bridges that take you over the various tributaries of the river itself.

Before we took to the water itself, we visited a rather dilapidated brickworks where they use the mud and clay from the river to produce, as far as I could see, two types of brick. Unfortunately the machine that makes the bricks was also a bit dilapidated and had broken down, but we got a sense of what it was all about and had a chance to look into the kilns, which are quite magical and reminded us a bit of the temples at Bagan. Must be all those bricks!

We were soon on the water itself (ok, the boat was on the water and we were on the boat) (pedant!) and chunkling along past the coconut processing workshops and various boats carrying all sorts of produce, including tourists.

There was so much to see and lots of people being busy carrying, raking, fishing, boating and generally being very industrious.

The boats are painted with very pronounced eyes on them, an ancient tradition to ward of river monsters, probably crocodiles (though none now survive). We did step on to dry land for a while to see a coconut sweet making business (I think I may have lost a filling there), take a walk down some of the country lanes and see how coconut rush mats are made. As you can see from the photos, schoolboys are the same all over the world. The frogs looked delicious – what a shame we were not offered any for lunch (!).

It was lunch next and delicious it was with a fried fish in a sort of toast rack (or fish rack) and spring rolls made at our table as we sat. I spotted someone who had obviously bustled a bit too much and was having a well-earned snooze. I love the photo of the hammock with only a hand and feet showing. The fruit is a pomelo in case you were wondering.

And there was a lovely and very accommodating butterfly that very decently came within camera length.

And then it was off up the byways and tributaries and onto our bus to make the journey back to the city. An excellent day out and probably deserving of a greater amount of time. Many people explore it by motorbike or bicycle. Maybe another time!

And that, dear reader, is Vietnam done, bar getting to the airport tomorrow (which we did very successfully as you can tell by the fact that I am typing this in Bali!).

We really liked Vietnam with the possible exception of Nha Trang, though even that had its good points. I would be happy to visit some bits again in a more leisurely fashion and there are other parts we could not reach such as Sa Pa in the far north that look fascinating. Nice people with plenty of variety between North and South and the usual Asian charm and desire to please throughout. It certainly feels like a country that is going places, though with one foot firmly in the past of kings and mandarins and a devastating war. It did not feel like a communist or socialist state and it would have been good to have been able to have chatted a bit with someone local a bit more about the political situation, but that seemed a rather taboo subject.

On to Singapore!