Exploring the Mekong Delta

The Mekong (Mother of all Rivers) rises high on the Tibetan plateau, and runs 4,800km through China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia before it finally enters the South China Sea through the Mekong delta, where it is known to the Vietnamese as the river of nine dragons as it braids into nine estuaries.

My task is to explore this fertile Vietnamese ricebowl, and in true serendipitous fashion I stumble on to the Innoviet travel agency just down the road from my hotel, which runs an overnight homestay tour involving cycling! Even better, their next tour leaves tomorrow, and I'll be joining a group of six others. Excellent - I can meet more fellow travellers (always easier in a group tour), and sneak in before the storm heads our way. I quickly part with $48 and look forward to two days of new adventure.

We meet at the agency at 7am. First problem - the hotel breakfast starts at 7am. I hover outside the kitchen begging for a bread roll and a bit of jam at 6.50am before racing down the street with crumbs flying everywhere.

On to the bus and I meet my travelling companions for the next two days - I'm sitting next to Mareike (German) and her Swiss boyfriend (Patrick - and no, he's not Irish). Mareike is a physiotherapist in Freiburg (Black Forest), while Patrick is a research chemist in Berne, working with fats. Doesn't sound very glamorous, but he's working on a project to turn saturated fats into unsaturated. I tell him to come to NZ. If we could breed/process sheep and cows so their meat contained unsaturated fats it would be a major boost to our meat industry.

Later in the day as we swap around I meet newlyweds Tera and Erik, an American couple who have spent a lot of time in NZ running confidence-building courses for kids. They're heading home to Colarado. And to cap off the NZ connection, Lucy and Ru live in Devonport! They're off to Sydney in March to earn better money and see the world - sounds just like Debbie and me 30 years ago.

Needless to say, all are around half my age, but I fit in ok. Our Vietnamese guide Thong (I think, pronounced something like Drom) has a quiet word to one of the others. "That's not George Bush, is it?", nodding in my direction - everyone has a good laugh. I can see I'll have to change my appearance - it's not the first time people have commented on my similarity to the soon to be ex-US President, both here and at home.

The delta is very flat and a bridge engineer's paradise - streams and tributaries everywhere, with a succession of large and small bridges to navigate. As happens in NZ on soft ground, the road slumps away from the bridge abutments over time, leaving some jarring transitions slowing the bus to a crawl. That plus general congestion makes for a slow but scenic trip.




We swap to a ferry and a succession of small boats and sampans, and explore a coconut candy factory, sample honey tea, and are entertained by a group playing Vietnamese music. I pass on the opportunity to buy a CD for 50,000 dong.

Finally the opportunity to do some cycling eventuates - I look forward to at least a mountain bike with a modicum of gearing, but find myself on a single speed free wheeler with a wide sprung seat. I feel like an old granny languidly cycling along, and try and visualise myself as a tough hard-edged mountain biker or bike courier who choose single speeds. Doesn't work very well, despite riding on the gravel edge of the paved track.

We pass through lush green rice fields and visit a rice processing factory where the rice grains are separated from the husks. On the delta they can get three rice harvests per year - a marked change from Sapa where they can manage only one due to the cooler temperatures. It really is the rice bowl of Vietnam here, and it's interesting to speculate on whether Cambodia would be richer and Vietnam poorer if the delta had remained as part of Cambodia.

The crocodile farm was a bit of a disappointment - lots of juvenile crocs in a pen, but nothing else. I was hoping to pick up some nice croc accessories for the the girls and me - shoes, belts, handbags - but it wasn't to be. Not a shop to be seen. And no snake farm - the travel office led me astray on that one.




But this little fellow in a nearby cage caught my eye. "Dead in one minute if he strikes you", explains Thong. I look carefully for holes in the rusty wire netting separating him from me.

Eventually we arrive at Vinh Long and meet our homestay hosts, none of whom can speak English. But it's surprising what a smile, sign language, and a few basic Vietnamese phrases can achieve. In anglicised pronunciation:

• Hello - Sin jow
• My name is Steve - Do la Steve
• Thank you - Garm ern
• Good bye - Darm bweet
  

Settling in.

Tera, Erik, Thong, Mareike, Patrick, Lucy & Ru sitting down to a sumptuous feed.

Dinner is superb, and with night well and truly fallen we tuck in to little sampans and cruise up the streams. It takes no time at all to spot them - little glowing lights up in the trees and darting to and fro - fireflies! With an improvised plastic bag on the end of a bamboo pole we swat at them and catch the occasional one - their lights turning the bag in to an incandescent balloon. Locals used to keep a few fireflies in a glass jar to act as a lantern.

I hadn't paid much attention to the wooden slab with its thin bamboo mat on arrival. But preparing for bed we quickly realise that this is it - our mattress! One blanket underneath is the only extra padding I get. Needless to say it is not a good night - I turn over and hope I fall asleep before the pain forces me to roll again. The situation is not helped by a premature rooster who decides that 3.44am is an excellent time for the world to wake up. I could have throttled the bastard, even if I do like chooks.

At 6.30am it's actually a relief to get up and resume our travels - this time to the floating markets.

Large boats come down from Saigon (the local name - it's mostly northerners who call it HCM) and run the produce they have to sell up on their masts. This is the signal for hordes of wholesalers to converge on them, loading up their little boats with produce to take off to the land markets on the various delta islands. We stop and buy some pineapples as an early breakfast treat.

On to the land markets - not dissimilar to the markets seen elsewhere in Vietnam, but now we have bread, coffee and some un-nameable sweet treats that are actually remarkably good. It pays to be adventurous with the food - you're often agreeably surprised.

And a few interesting sights in the meat section too.

Eyeing up a pig's head...

On to a local brick factory. Sounds boring, but it was surprisingly interesting. Local clay is fed through a rattly old machine that extrudes the bricks, which then dry in the sun for a few days before being fired in a kiln for 15 days. Rice husks are used as fuel, and the ash is returned to the fields as fertiliser. All very low tech, but functional and sustainable.

Highlight is the visit to the local temple - I've never seen so many joyful, happy smiling kids. They may be orphans but it's not clear. Most have half their head shaved, which means they're not long term at the temple. I carry one of the kids on my shoulders, and he thinks it's a huge joke as he's now looking down on everyone else.

As I normally do at the temples, I discreetly slip a small note in to the donation box. This one surprised me - the note triggered a detector and as everyone swung round to look at the commotion we were enertained by 10 seconds of religious music in gratitude!

Back to the home stay and we help out by making spring rolls for lunch. These are different to my Hoi An ones. The contents are wrapped in a net-style rice paper, briefly deep-fried and served. They're eaten by wrapping in a larger sheet of solid rice paper, along with salad ingredients and noodles, and dipping in condiments - light fish oil and chili. Excellent! Rice paper is a magic material - acts like greaseproof paper, but of course it's edible, so it serves as all manner of food wrappings.

These little cuties were bought from the market by a previous homestay group, and provided lots of entertainment.

We say our good byes to our hosts and most of our fellow travellers - only Mareike, Patrick and I are returning to Saigon - and a slow, tedious trip it is. Good to be back in the Yellow House Hotel for a non-squat toilet and shower. I'm so full after the large lunch I skip dinner and collapse in to a nice soft bed, with the National Geographic channel lulling me off to sleep.

My next encounter of the Mekong will be in Cambodia - roll on!