TRAVEL-TRAVEL: MEKONG DELTA

Mekong Delta is about 2 and a half hour bus ride from Vietnam's capital, Ho chi minh City also known as Saigon.

I know the Mekong river looks like Pasig River (see the pictures), but its so much bigger in person, and I swear it didn't smell, and if you're not a travel geek, FYI Mekong river is the 12th longest river in the whole world, it runs through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, AMAAAZING isn't it! Just think about it, you could get you're passport stamped so many times just by riding a boat in China up to Vietnam!

 We booked a day trip to Mekong Delta for 480,000 VND or around 24 USD or 1000 PHP around 7:30am and the bus fetch us around 8am.

A little background info, we arrived in Saigon Train Station (Ga Saigon) from our 35 hour train ride from Hanoi (yes, it's that long!), rent a cab, went to backpackers district, got a room which costs 22USD for the four of us in a room), and booked a tour around 7:30am.

 The tour included the bus ride of course, a very entertaining English speaking tour guide, then trip to three islands, in the first island, there's tasting of different tropical fruits, jackfruit (langka), longgan (I even brought its seeds back here in Manila, planted it and voila, I have my little longgan plant), pineapple, chico, and suha. The locals performed their folk songs while we're munching fruits and having tea.You can also go shopping while they're serving fruits, and I swear it's the same price as the once they sell in Ben Thanh Market in Saigon. 

After the fruit tasting, we'll travel again by boat, except, this boat will only fit four people to transfer to the other side of the island, where they showed us how to make coconut candy, (and being a Filipino, looks familiar and tastes just the same as our macapuno here), we brought two local weavings of local life in Vietnam, then there's the snake wine (they do free taste, but even the idea of just the snake alone gives me the creeps), we also brought coconut juice, I don't know why we even bother buying when there's lots of buko juice in our home province.

Our last stop is the island where we'll eat our lunch, it was about 2 in the afternoon, and where soooo starved, so my piece of advice is to bring crackers.They served us, a cup of rice, some veggie, some very tasty meat and my fave food in Vietnam, spring rolls (I know we have our own spring rolls here in the Phils but, theirs' is very tasty). The food is included in the 480,000 VND. You could order more food but then you'll have to pay additional VND. Then the tour guide gave us about 1 hour to munch our food, take s stroll, sleep in some duyan attached to trees but again, you'll have to pay for you to be able sleep (the idea of paying to lie down is so bizarre for me), take a bike ride but the bicycles are so big, I think they're American size or something, they're just too big for Asian people to ride so we ended up on walking on the area, take a pee and go home.

Can Tho Port

This is what the boat we rode looks like

Group of singers performing Vietnam folk songs

Local Artist, you can buy their obra maestra on the spot

They let you borrow their local hats

Their tea is so delicious!

They sell honey made products

Longgan trees all around

I know the Mekong river looks like Pasig River, but its so much bigger in person, and I swear it didn't smell, and if you're not a travel geek, FYI Mekong river is the 12th longest river in the whole world, it runs through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, AMAZING isn't it!

coconut candy making

snake wine (its very creepy looking in personal)

lunch

well... you need to pay additional ka-ching for this beast, I mean fish, 

so we just ended up drooling over it.

The background's the restaurant where we ate.

The very BIG BIKE I couldn't even ride!

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