The Mekong Delta

I was expecting rice paddies and straw huts. Instead I saw a sprawling mass of humanity from Saigon to the Delta. There are a lot of people here without break between these 2 areas.

Our tour guide was great, I give her a solid 8 on my scale, about the same as Mr Teng. We took a taxi from our hotel to our jumping off point which was their office base of operations in My Tho, the regional center for the area.

From there, we hopped in a boat and did a general river survey before getting on an island area to watch them make coconut products. It was interesting, but clearly a stop to get you to buy coconut stuff and the same ticky tacky stuff you see all over the place. Prices are of course negotiable.



The boat was very interesting in that the design makes it so that as the big barges float by it sheds the water from the wake so it does not come inside the boat. This is not what I would call a good dive destination either; the water is a caramel brown and very muddy.

An interesting part of this tour was all the different food sampling they had us do. We had everything from their version of a single malt, to fruits. to the really gross stuff they were pulling out of the river. Sorry, a catfish is ugly no matter where he is. Our fish in the picture was called an elephant ear. It wasn't too bad to eat, they shaved the meat off the sides of the fish and placed it in a rice paper wrap with veggies. Some of the other offerings I was not game for are listed to the left. They were pushing the snake for $10 pretty hard. I passed, Brian considered.