Mar. 16 - Ho Chi Minh City, The Mekong

The Mekong River which snakes through, China, Thailand, Laos (?), Cambodia, and Vietnam, is important to the development and economy of these regions. Many of the inhabitants in these countries rely on the Mekong for various reasons, from transportation to housing (i.e. floating communities) to bathing to fishing to trading and selling, etc. We take a boat ride on the Mekong to visit a couple islands.

On one of the islands, we stop by to pose with a giant boa constructor; that is, I attempt to hold the heavy snake while shrieking for ma to take the pic quickly so I can give back the snake to its owner. The owner asks if I would like to hold a screen from his bee hive. Remembering how much it hurt when I got bit by a bee, I quickly respond “no thanks”. Ma shudders, and moves onto enjoy honey tea. Afterwards, we walk through the tropical vegetation, seeing pineapple sprouts, logan trees, dragon fruit vines. Our tour includes a stop to enjoy the exotic fruits. We then canoe down a very narrow, winding river, with water coconut branches on either side arching way up over us. In our pics, it looks like this is a quiet, fairly isolated journey, but in actual fact there are tourists canoe to canoe in a long line here. Nevertheless, we enjoy the ride.

Next, we head to a very small outdoor coconut candy factory. Upon sampling the delicious treat, ma and I play the good tourist and buy a bag, but only one, politely refusing the “buy 4 get one free, make good gift for friends and family” offers. The day trip out to the Mekong is far; we hit rush hour traffic on the way home. We spend the rest of the day in this traffic. I shouldn’t have drank so much water…