SE Asia Day 9

February 1, 2009

Today we began our journey to Cambodia. We will be traveling on a tour through the Mekong Delta from Vietnam to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. We left Saigon at 7:30 on a mini-bus with about 10 other people. We drove 3 hrs south to My Tho, where we boarded a boat that travels up the Mekon. Our guide explained that life on the Mekong focuses around the tributaries and rivers that make it up. While on the river we stopped at numerous little “village” where the goods were made. My personal opinion is that these villages are staged for tourists and that the people working there travel from other areas to work here, but regardless the experience was one of a kind. First up was the Candy Village. The village consisted of an open air tent where the locals make all the candy that is distributed around Vietnam. We saw them make coconut taffy mixed with chocolate. The candy was great and cheap too.

After buying a bunch of candy….great souvenirs… we sat and enjoyed some tea and samples of the other candies them make there. At this point, our guide brings out a large jar that was filled with wine, 7 snakes and a scorpion, smartly called….snake wine. This wine is considered a delicacy in Vietnam and is supposed to be a good source of vitamins and virility. Now this is something I would never buy, but luckily for us, he was giving free samples J The bottle he presented actually contained what looked like a small cobra that was positioned with the tale of a scorpion laying in it’s open mouth, pretty sweet. Being free and something we would never have the chance to do again, Jen and I volunteered to taste some….bottoms up. The wine was actually not bad, it weirdly tasted what I thought snake wine would taste like. I once had rattlesnake sausage and the wine tasted very similar to it. Supposedly the wine can make you hallucinate or feel drunk after just a shot of it, however Jen and I felt no side effects from it….except the urge to swallow small rodents whole.

Next up, we visited another village where they make popped rice and corn cakes. They were not as tasty as the candy we had sampled before, but it was still interesting to see them make. After buying and tasting everything we could we headed to an island called “Beach Pool” for lunch. Here we boarded smaller boats where tiny ladies, under 100lbs, rowed us up a small tributary to the center of the island to our lunch spot. Our tiny lady was definitely huffing and puffing rowing the 3 of us up the river. I felt bad, but we gave her a good tip. Once at the restaurant we ordered the specialty of the island, Elephant Ear Fish spring rolls. When the food arrived we were treated to a yellow, spiky fish that looked somewhat like a piranha, cooked whole. To make the spring rolls we would grab some rice paper and fill it with meat pulled off the fish, rice noodles, basil, mint and sprouts. Then after wrapping it all up, dip the roll in fish sauce and enjoy. It was so good! The fish was very mild and I think I am now addicted to fish sauce. After lunch we hopped on some local bicycles and rode across the island in the 90+ heat. Very fun but hot hot hot!

Meeting us at the other side of the island was our boat, which we rode to another dock, them boarded our bus again and headed to Can Tho. There we took showers in what seemed like a random Buddhist monastery and then boarded a larger boat bound for the boarder town of Chau Doc. We are actually sleeping on the boat tonight as it floats up the Mekong towards Chau Doc. We had a great night on the boat! We all drank entirely too much of “Bah, Bah, Bah” Beer aka “666”. Oh my god, terrible beer that causes the worst headaches. As we all know, alcohol is a great social lubricant and as a result we made some new friends on the boat. We met a really nice couple from Wales that are following the same path as us for the next few days. Unfortunately we haven’t found the Vietnamese people to be overly friendly. They are polite and helpful but not really conversational. I’m sure one of the main reasons is the language barrier, but I just don’t get the feeling that they are really interested in conversing. Oh well, overall our experience in Vietnam was phenomenal and I would highly recommend it as a necessity when traveling to SE Asia.