A relaxing two days on a Bassac Boat on the Mekong Delta, learning how the people live and work here.
Before we joined our boat to explore the Mekong Delta we were taken on a long low-level boat to cruise the waterways and visit a traditional manufacturer of coconut candy and rice-paper.
The coconut candy is made with coconut milk extracted from the pressed coconut flesh. This is mixed with malt (from rice I think) and sugar. This is heated together to create the pliable candy mix which is then cooled and cut into chunks. The candy pieces are wrapped in rice paper, made from rice water poured onto some kind of cloth stretched over a pan of boiling water.
Traditionally every step would have been done by hand but machines help out nowadays.
They also made popped rice here, I think it went into a different candy. Sand is heated up to a very high temperature and then the rice is mixed with it causing it to expand. The mixture is sieved to separate the rice and sand.
After we'd seen all the demos we were given a cup of tea and pieces of local sweets to try - the peanut brittle was good, the strips of ginger quite hot. We also had our hands smeared with "royal jelly" from bees - very sticky but supposed to be very good for the skin.
We also got to try a little of the snake rice wine, traditionally made with a cobra and very potent! They also make one with a snake and scorpion in the bottle!
The factory was on quite a peaceful stretch of the river, less sparsely populated, with many coconut palms.
We were then taken from the verdant river area of the coconut candy manufacturer back through a busier stretch of the river to Cai Be to board our Bassac Boat, perhaps half an hour on the water.
There was lots of interest on the water - many people fishing with traditional nets off the back of their boat, barges hauling goods, services for the businesses and homes lining both banks of the river. It's very much a working environment.
FruitererI find working rivers endlessly fascinating, many great European cities were founded on equally great rivers which would have been as crowded and busy as this one in times past.
The Bassac Boat is a copy of a traditional rice barge, typical of the Mekong Delta. It's fairly small and we had one of only two upper deck cabins. It is all wood and looks distinctly more attractive than many of the white boats at Halong Bay.
Because it is so small we had brought only a small overnight bag and left our cases with the car.
As we set off lunch was served, fabulous prawns boiled in coconut water plus lots of other things.
For the rest of the afternoon we sailed further out into the Delta with its endlessly fascinating traffic.
We sailed along the Tien Gang River which branches into the Cho Lach canal. Mostly the riverbanks were much less built-up than where we had started from but we did pass by one or two towns.
We saw many temples of different styles. Vietnam is predominantly Buddhist but Confucianism, Taoism and Christianity have all been influential in Vietnamese spiritual life.
On the Mang Thit River we boarded a smaller boat to be taken to visit a traditional Mekong Delta village.
The village was set among orchards and rice paddies and the ground was obviously extremely fertile judging by the wide variety of fruit that grow here: banana, guava, mango, dragon fruit, water apple, lime - which they call lemon, they don't have yellow lemons.
We'd never come across water coconut before. These grow in agave-type plants in swampy conditions and apparently taste just like ordinary coconut.
We passed by simple homes on our way to the paddy fields. It must be a very challenging environment to live in, constantly damp and muddy.
At one of the houses tables had been laid outside with many different fruits for us to try including jackfruit which is like mango but rubbery in texture. The mango itself was excellent, also the coconut strips prepared with sugar. There were some flat crispy banana strips with some kind of seeds which were also very good.
It was getting quite dark by the time we left and there was a lovely sunset over the Delta. The boat was all lit up when we returned and as we freshened up and ate dinner it sailed on through the Delta.
The food was again very good, an unusual tomato soup, fried pork spring rolls, and an excellent sea bass in lemon sauce. A beef dish was not so exciting but we finished off with pancakes with small bananas and a thick chocolate sauce.
It had been a fascinating day on the Mekong Delta with more to come tomorrow on the Bassac River.