On Friday we took a three hour bus tour to the Mekong Delta. After arriving at the river we boarded a motor boat to take a tour of the river. Many people live on the river in small boats. They live, eat and sleep on these small boats. They also go up and down the river selling their fish, potatoes, pumpkins, watermelons, etc. The river itself is pretty dirty. They bath in the river and also use it as their toilet. The landscape along the river was beautiful.
We came to our next stop where we were shown how they make coconut candy and rice paper. We were given samples that were delicious. We were offered tastes of rice wine, but only the strong were daring enought to try it. It is made with snake or scorpians and no one seemed to like it. We also were shown how they pop rice to make rice cakes or rice cripies. They heat a kettle with sand and when it gets very hot they add the rice, that then pops. After this they transfer it to a strainer and any that are not popped they use again. They then add sugar and malt and cook for 15 mins then spread it out on a table and cut it up. It was pretty tasty.
After this tour we continued down the river to an island where we were treated to a real Vietnamese lunch, we had soup, pork, rice and spring rolls, that are so famous here. For desert we were offered a series of different fruits. After lunch we were serenaded by a group of workers that live on the island. They also had two ladies sing stories which were quite beautiful.
Another 15 minutes down the river and our trip concluded in a market place, much like the ones in Thailand, which sells, fruits, veggies, and the eels, snakes, frogs, etc.
It was a long day and hot but we stopped half way home at a beautiful rest area and restaurant which provided the ice cream to top our trip off.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
The Handicapped Store and the Cu Chi Tunnels
On Friday, we took our first bus tour to see the Cu Chi Tunnels. On the way our first pit stop was a handicapped handicraft store. It was a two hour bus trip to the tunnels and the tour company has their first bathroom stop here at this shop. As you enter you are greeted by table upon table of handicapped people working on pictures and all sorts of lacquered ware products. Many are made with egg shells or sea shells. It was all done by hand and was absolutely beautiful. I wanted to buy so many things but only had twenty minutes, so Mark promised me that when we get our own place we could go back and check them out again.
The final stop was the Cu Chi Tunnels, an area near Ho Chi Minh City that during the war was famous for its underground tunnels. The tunnel network became legendary during the 1960's for its role in facilitating the Viet Cong control of a large rural area. The maze of tunnels was amazing. Most were destroyed by US bombings. Some of the entrances to the tunnels are so small that the people had to hold their hands above their heads to descend into them. See some of the pictures. In these tunnels they had hospitals, eating areas and supply centers. There were also many booby traps for the American Soldiers, that tried to enter them. According to the authors of the book The Tunnels of Cu Chi, it was the most bombed, shelled, gassed, defoliated and generally devastated area in the history of warfare. Today they have replanted much of the foliage and crops but there is still a poor outcome of crops due to the chemicals used.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Sights and Observations
Monday we had to head to the post office so we made it a time to see more sights. It was about a 20 min walk from our hotel to the post office. We had to go past a park around a traffic circle and then through the downtown district which includes many high rise financial buildings, dept stores and many, many hotels. The area we are staying in is known as the back packer district, cheaper hotels and dorms for only $3.00 a night if you like, but the downtown is where the wealthier visitors stay and a shoppers heaven. We first passed the Independence Palace, this is where in 1975, a tank belonging to the Northern Army broke throught the gate and began the fall of Saigon and the south. The next stop was the Catholic Cathedral and then the post office which is the only one we could find in town, it has a map of Vietnam on the walls that was painted in 1938. We had to take a picture of the Highlands Coffee Shop, they are a chain and are similar to our Starbucks. The Saigon River was our last stop, they have a ferry to cross but that would have put us further away from our hotel.
Whenever you go anywhere, there are many street vendors plus those who just carry there wears to sell, I have been offered so many books, sunglasses, wallets, zipo lighters even in the resturants they just stand there waiting, hoping, until you just turn away and continue your conversations. Then, there are the cyclo drivers, always asking, where you from and where you going, I take you there. We had one cross a busy street just to escort us across, he risked his life twice for us so we paid him 5,000 dong, about 30 cents for his help. Then there are the shoe shine people. Even if you are wearing sandles they want to shine them. We sat down for ice cream, Mark ordered a scoup of coconut, which turned out to be a scoup of chocolate in a coconut with a cone on top, and I kept telling the boy no shine my tennis shoes but he took out his toothbrush anyway and I kept insisting that because of the rain it would not help, finally I had to just get up and leave and then, of course he says, Please I am hungary !!!
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