Vignettes from Vietnam 7

16 May 2012

Mekong Delta and Ben Tre Trip

Xin Chao my readers and friends,

We left home early to join the tour group at Backpackers lane. We left at 8.30 and reached there at 10. We left the bus to catch a ferry after a short walk through the fruit garden. Some bought conical hats here, cheaper than Saigon...for a dollar each. Once on the ferry we enjoyed the breeze and the view, crossed some fish farms on the Mekong. From here we reached first stop at Ben Tre. The rice paper making unit. We saw how the rice paper, tapioca paper were made in a traditional Vietnamese way. We tasted some and bought some rice paper. Then we checked out some coconut handicrafts. The cutlery, the ladles, the bowls, the masks, the chopsticks and a whole lot of decorative stuff from coconut.

No bargaining in the real sense. Vietnamese become rude and annoyed when you haggle. As it is there is only the sign language and they get frustrated very fast. Pick up what ever you feel is right. It will be cheaper than SaiGon anyway.

Vietnamese have an early lunch, say 12.30, so it was time for lunch. My younger daughter is a non-vegetarian but after seeing a huge elephant ear fish being served at those tables she ran back to us, a group of five vegetarians. The hostess made us rice paper spring rolls with cucumber, tofu, basil, thyme and some rice. It was nice. Then she got us fried springrolls and hot vegetable soup with some herbs, pumpkin, tofu and mushrooms. It was just wonderful. Then came saute'd mushrooms, tofu and hot sticky rice...a nice flavored local variety. With lots of green herbs, soya sauce, chilly sauce etc to accompany. It was a sumptuous lunch. Though the ingredients for us remained same for nearly every dish the taste and presentation was different....

We roamed around a bit and tasted a delicious variant of Dragon fruit, Magenta in color both inside and out. When bitten into, the yummy magenta juice filled the mouth.

Then we said bye to this lovely place, took back our ferry to go to another place, a bee farm. But its not the honey that we taste first. We are offered to taste snake wine. Eeekkkkkkkssss looks so yuck...Aww it looks deadly with snakes and scorpion in the bottle. Well 'its for sex' thats all what the man told. It also has ginseng...okay got it, so its a kind of aphrodisiac potion. We move on. Don't think anyone had the guts to try or buy that in our group. Don't know if someone sneaked back to do that.

We were shown the bees and served some green tea with honey and tangerine. It was just the right drink for an afternoon. The honey at different places gets a distinct flavor from the flowers around that area. Here Longan was in full boom and honey was sweet and mildly flavored of longan. Felt like buying it. The price around 400 INR a kg...but carrying it???

It began raining and Mr Chu gave us some one time use raincoats. Transparent sheaths with hoods made us look like some fairy tale characters. We walked out to some horse carts and took a short sweet journey on those while it drizzled through the sunshine. It was magical. We stopped here to walk into the meandering way through the trees on either sides to go to another place for some tropical fruits and traditional Vietnamese songs and music. Mr Chu's commentary...made up for a good witty MC. We were again served tea...green tea with honey and tangerine. Then came the snake that everyone wanted to pose with. Me too. Its fun when you know its harmless...you feel you have conquered. My daughters felt different though, coz the creep actually began moving on them.

The canoes were ready and my elder one was missing. She went to play with some dog. So we were the last ones to leave the place. Mr Chu came on the same canoe. We rowed through the narrow river on palms and water coconuts on either sides. It seemed very unreal. We came out to board our ferry that was waiting there. The bunch of boys bathing in the muddy Mekong waters made a cute picture.
Muddy water bath...in Mekong...

We then move on to our final stop over for the day. The coconut candy making factory. Coconut milk, sugar and malt being cooked to thicken it. Here they make coconut candies with various flavor like Durian, Banana, Sour sop and others. I bought all but Durian. My senses just do not agree with that flavor.

Just behind this was a shop selling bag.  Bags made with snake and crocodile skin, obscenely priced. I would not care if they sold any cheaper though. And there was some hand embroidered tees and dinning table sets. Priced decently. Good buy those who appreciate hand embroideries.

We left this place to get on to our ferry. Got back to our bus through the fruit garden. Picked some wild fruit called Trung Ca, it is very very sweet. Nhi tells me that it is  Trung' Ca.. means like fish eggs, hence the name.... My my, I ate vegetarian fish eggs. LOL...  .

Back to the bus I talked with Mr Chu about other places. More interesting stuff on 18th......

17 May 2012

Thats today. Had a very lazy day today. Had a good Indian breakfast, my lemongrass potion and a Vietnamese Indian mixed variety lunch with Bhindi ki Indian sabzi... Its noodles at night. An early dinner already waiting to be laid out at 6.30. Noodles and some VN fare.... Smelling so nice while its cooking. May be then I will go for a walk.........Chalo, its been a long blog but its not boring.

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