My next short jaunt out of Ho Chi Minh City was a tour of the Mekong Delta. The Mekong flows through much of Southeast Asia and is of utmost importance to the livelihood of those who live along its banks. When it reaches the sea, the mighty river breaks into many distributories flowing over the vast expanse of the Mekong Delta, stretching at least a 100km along the coast of Vietnam. Even its distributories are vast, taking some effort to cross.
At some places, the river was narrow enough to build a bridge across.
At others, the opposite bank was a bit too far away for a bridge.
We had to crowd with the motobikes in the ferries to get across. Aside from the usual chickens, ducks and vegetables, one even carried live fish in a makeshift waxed canvas tank.
The river was their livelihood and people lived along the river even if it meant building their houses on stilts. No matter if there wasn’t land in the front, a hanging garden did the trick.
Others grew their garden on the balconies, like this house with its dragonfruit cacti creeping down towards the water.
Further away from the river were places of worship, like this Khmer temple that looked like it had been transplanted from Cambodia.
This area being close to Cambodia, there was a significant Khmer minority here. Some of the Buddhist temples I saw in this area were of quite a different style from the other Mahayana temples I’d seen in Vietnam. This was definitely closer to the Thai and Lao style temples…
… even down to the saffron-robed monks running the temple.
There was also a scattering of other places of worship, like this church here. It looked a little incongruous rising elegantly from the rather scruffy stilt huts along the river.
As part of the tour, we were taken to see some of the cottage industries. One of them was food manufacture. Here, ladies patiently worked over wood fires making rice paper by hand.
Others tempered melted coconut sugar to make rich caramelly coconut candy.
And men did the grunt work of pressing popped rice into blocks which would then be coated in syrup and cut into crispy-crunchy sugary snacks.
It was lovely wandering through the little hamlets in the area, passing under gardens and other topiary.
And also chancing on a wedding banquet, where the happy couple was happy to let tourists take pictures of them on their big day.
There were also some quiet backwaters…
… which weren’t so quiet when children popped out of nowhere screaming “hello hello!” at passing tourist boats.
It was lovely to wave back at them…
… their smiles were such a lovely lift to river experience.
eat. drink. cook. travel. 