Today we got up early to prepare for our Mekong Delta day trip. The street we're staying in has the best food places so we found somewhere cheap and had brekky....boiled eggs & bread. The food is simple yet so very delicious over here. After a feed we headed to the travel agent to meet our tour, right on schedule the bus arrived and 9 of us hopped on board, the only downside....the bus had ZERO leg room! It was about a 2hr drive to the Mekong Delta but we had 2 small stops along the way. When we arrived we hopped on a long boat which took us along the Mekong, we got to visit 2 provinces in the region but there's heaps more. First stop was on a little island where we walked around and were shown some honey bees, we're all standing there as our tour guide showed us the honeycomb and explained how they get the honey and then.....in this chicken wire cage near the bees was a 'small' python! He took it out of the cage and asked if anyone wanted it around their necks...me being up for most things volunteered first, it was so weird, you can feel all of it's muscles contract as it moves around you.... We then had honey tea and some delicious local sweets. We walked around a wee bit further and sat down again where they served us some local fruit and more tea, we were then entertained with some traditional music. We then got loaded into row boats and they rowed us along this canal back down to the Mekong where our long boats were waiting. Back on the river we went to the second province and taken to a place where they make the local Coconut Candy, they were just in this open 'shed' making candy that gets sent all over Vietnam, we got to try some and it was AWESOME! They have different types but the standard one is a chewy coconut caramel lolly, so yummy, everyone bought some to take with them. From there we were taken to have lunch (I know what your thinking....more food...yes, we've eaten all day), we arrived got seated and lunch was pre arranged but there was additional menu that you could order from....it had things like squirrel, crocodile, snake, iguana and numerous other like things (no I'm not kidding). A fellow Aussie on the tour, Glen, decided that he would try snake, he had to go and choose his own snake which they then killed in front of him by cutting it's head off with a pair of scissors, they then brought the heart of the snake to the table which he was to eat.....mind you it was still beating! He swallowed it down like an oyster and then the rest of his snake came out meat and skin....satay style. He offered it around so I tried some, it was chewy like calamari sometimes is, it didn't really taste like anything probably because it was covered in satay. After lunch we made our way back to Saigon to some more beers. It's been a really fun day. Off to Cambodia tomorrow.
Will post photos soon.
Till next time,
Beck
