We started our day bright an early at 6am. We met up with our tour guide at 7am and proceeded to walked to the river. The humidity that greeted us outside was so strong that our camera lenses were coated in fog the moment we removed their caps. The sun had just risen over the house tops and its rays caught the lapping river waves. It was a beautiful way to start the day. Houses line the river beds, half the house is on land while the back half of the house juts out over the river.
Our boat took us to Vietnam's iconic Floating Market where boats crowd the river and you can buy a broad assortment of goods and fruits.
After we were toured around the market we boated down a canal to a fruit garden which grows everything from bananas to papaya to jack fruit. A system of water ways weaves through the garden and are filled with lily pads and coy fish. Ducks and ducklings meander about. Behind the garden are large rice fields.
After we walked around the garden for a while we found some vacant hammocks to relax in. We've escaped the dense heat of the Ho Chi Minh City and traded it in for warm breezes and thick humidity. The breeze feels refreshing on our always tacky skin however being that we are in a fruit garden the wind carries with it the aromas of rancid fruit that didn't get picked in time.
Today we learned that when you are in a fruit garden in Vietnam and you see a snail shell do not pick it up. It could be home to a hundred maggots (we're still not sure why Alicia picked the shells up in the first place, but I can promise you she didn't do it again).
Following our relaxing time at the fruit garden we hopped back on our boat and went to a rice cake factory where they rice paper to be turned into rice noodles. Rice. Ride. Rice. And more rice.
The end of our tour in the Mekong region was marked by a lunch at a restaurant in Can Tho where we were treated to beef, chicken, pork, squid, Pho, garlic sautéed greens and rice.
We then embarked on our 5 hour bus ride back to Ho Chi Minh City. I slept most of the drive and it was for the most part an anticlimactic trip except for this one moment where our tour bus hit two guys on a scooter causing quite the spectacle in the middle of the road. But in classic Vietnamese fashion the two gentlemen picked up their scooter and our tour bus had driven off before they'd even had to the time get on their scooter. As far as we can tell no one was hurt and the way the situation was handled leads us to believe that this may be a regular occurrence here in Vietnam.
Back in Ho Chi Minh city we grabbed one last burger at Gotcha (felt so good to have familiar food, our bodies and taste buds have collectively agreed that they prefer American food to Vietnamese food), picked up our big packs at our old hotel and taxied to our new hotel where we spent the evening watching Netflix because we were exhausted.
As always, thanks for following along and prayers for safety and health are always appreciated!
-mo