Mekong Delta- A Wonderful Water World: Raw Boats

My Mekong Delta experience continues. As I mentioned in my previous article, we firstly visited the local bee-keeping farm where we learnt from the villages how to collect natural honey from all kind of Pollen- Nectar tropical fruits and tasted some honey based mixtures and drinks.

And this is the honey and bee tea (I guess the bee got inside Cez’s drink by accident) :).

Nothing tastes better than natural honey straight from… the hive! :)

Tea time!

Boat cruising

However, the main attraction of the day were the raw boats which took us across Upper Branch of Mekong River- Tien River.

We went along the Tien River upstream. However, we didn’t visit  Cai Be floating market. We have heard it’s a nice place where hundreds of various boats gather to sell as well as buy the local products. Our ride was a short one. We just crossed the Tien River upstream within 15 minutes to get to our big boat.

On that day there were more or less 5.000 tourists having the same experience.

Yeah, this place was a “little bit” overcrowded.

There were 5 of us, not including the oarsman, sitting on the same boat: me, Cez, a French lady with a little girl and Chinese man. We all had a great time together. That’s the Chinese lad we met that day. It was nice to speak Chinese again!

Cez being very sneaky trying to spot a crocodile :).

The water seemed to be very dirty and we were not allowed to stick our hands outside the boat for safety seasons.

We were passing many boats some full of tourists, other ones full of  fruits and vegetables being transported waterway.

Here you can see a few local people rowing across the river (mostly ladies- they must be super strong!). They were wearing straw hats, pants and shirts with long sleeves and face masks to avoid the the sun and mosquitoes.

These people were so busy rushing all the time. Time’s money as they say :).

She looked so miserable :(.

The scenery was very beautiful and we felt like being in a Vietnamese jungle surrounded by various plants and wild animals (some said there were crocodiles in the water).

This place was kinda mysterious, so like a bush.

I was over the moon during the whole ride taking some photos of locals rawing their boats and mosquitoes were not a big deal for us. We forgot to take the mosquito spray with us and at first we felt kinda worried but as it turned out there were not many of them there.

Making coconut candies

After the boat ride, we walked a few minutes to get to a small local village where we observed locals made sweets and coconut based products.

The Mekong Delta is famous for its fresh coconuts growing all year long. Apart from eating coconut meat and drinking coconut water locals make a lot of products using this nutritious fruit such as wines, candies, chocolate using various machines.

Here the coconut syrup and coconut butter are being made. So delicious!

And here some ladies are making coconut candies. It all looks so easy but it’s not. These ladies work very hard doing one thing during the whole day- kneading, wrapping and packing coconut candies.

The candies are made of coconut butter with some sugar added. After that, they are placed on the plate. The candies are very sweet and sticky too!

Then women wrap them in foil and put on a paper tray.

Finally, the candies are packaged in a film and labeled.

And here they are… ready to eat!! :)

Here are some other coconut made products such as lollipop, waffles, chewing gums and coconut wines.

Various different shapes and colors of bottled wines were attracting our attention.

This is my very favourite coconut wine. The king of all wines! Such a good treat. If I could, I would start my day with a glass of this posh drink!

Horse riding

Once we left the “coconut factory” we went for a horse ride! Yeah, the horse ride!

The horse was so adorable… I felt kinda guilty :(…

The guys couldn’t wait for their turn :).

We sat at back of a trailer (room for maximum of 6 people) drawn by a horse. It was a nice ride, but a short one.

Here I am !

A quick photo :).

We were taken from the village to a small marina where the big boat was waiting for us to transport us to Phoenix Island- whoo woooo! Off we go!

Lunch on Phoenix Island and crocodile hunt coming next soon :)!

Stay tuned.

Love,

Agness