The Mekong Delta lies west of Ho Chi Minh city and is an hour and a half drive away. Life in the Mekong Delta revolves much around the river, and the villages are often accessible by rivers and canals rather than by road.
While waiting to board the boat, I was intrigued by the shops selling these bottles of liquor.
There are cobra scorpion liquor, huge cobra liquor, even Gekko and sea horse liquor! I wonder who would buy these... locals? or tourist?
Besides liquor, they also sell cream with snake venom... ? why would anyone want to buy snake venom? wouldn't the venom kill someone? but apparently, the cobratoxan warms your muscles to give you a comfortable feeling. Due to the direct impact of venom, it reduces pains from inflammatory arthritis, myositis and acute neuralgia. Would you care to try some?
Time to board the boat. This boat brings you across the river into the local villages.
We reached the village which produces various items, mainly from coconuts. These cutlery are made from coconut husks.
These cutlery are made from corals.
Monkeys made from coconut - they even wear Vietnamese hats!
How about some wood carvings? If you realise, they can be closed up to become a flat piece of wood. It takes quite a skill to be able to carve the wood.. hence the hefty price to it. Cost about SGD12 a piece, no bargaining allowed.
Many of my colleagues were buying this coconut candy.
I was more interested in the candy making process. The coconuts are grated first, then mixed rapidly over hot charcoal to form a brown paste. After which the staff would line the coconut paste into long strips and left to dry, Lastly, they would cut the dried coconut paste into small bite size pieces to form the coconut candy.
We took a short walk to another village.
Not forgetting to take some shots of the beautiful scenery around.
We arrived at another village which has a resting hut all made from wood and palm tree leaves.
Various fruits are served, while the villages perform some southern Vietnamese folk songs for you.
Finally comes the most exciting part of the trip, to take a boat ride along the small canals.
Each boat can take 4 persons, and have 2 rowers, one at front and the other at the back.
It's a tough job rowing these boats, and the boat trip lasts for about half an hour.
We arrived at another village which produce honey products. We were served a small glass of honey water with pollen. The pollen looked like peanuts on first glance, and we were actually wondering why they had to put peanuts into the honey water. Only after finishing the drink then we realised that it was actually pollen and not peanuts! So all of us helped ourselves for another round of honey pollen water!
These are the stuff the villagers are selling - honey, pollen and cream. Yes the packet which looks like peanuts is actually the most expensive item - the honey pollen!
We were also served some snacks, like dried banana, dried ginger, which were available for sale as well.
And here's the source of the honey!
The bees actually gives me the creeps from near!
On the way back, everyone was served a huge coconut to quench our thirst. The coconut had alot of juice, but they weren't very sweet. Well it's better than nothing... especially in the hot afternoon weather.
Although it is quite a long way to Mekong Delta from Ho Chi Minh city, and the weather was quite hot in the afternoon, it was quite a good experience to explore the villages of the Delta. If you are in Ho Chi Minh and have a day to spend, do include the Mekong Delta into your itinerary.
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