Mekong Delta = the dirty, interesting “rice bowl” of Vietnam
Touring the Mekong Delta was in seriously every single “Things to do in Ho Chi Minh City” blog or book we read. So, I made it a point that we had to take a tour.
I am usually not a fan (read: not a fan at all) of group tours or actually any type of organized tours. I find them too orchestrated and less adventurous and idealistic than I prefer in my travels, but we couldn’t find another easy or practical way to get to the Mekong Delta.
We just found a small shop advertising tours in downtown Ho Chi Minh the night before we went on the tour and booked it. The tour guide picked us up from our hotel the next morning. We were paired with another couple from Europe for our trip.
We did a few different things on the tour aside from just sailing on the brown waters of the Mekong Delta. I don’t even know if it’s an option to opt out of this. I didn’t find it that interesting or that it added anything special to our adventure, but I suppose we were able to see places that we wouldn’t have been able to without the tour guide.
The first thing we did was visit a local temple that is native to the Delta.The tour guide did a lot of explaining about the details of the temple. I sort of wondered off from his explanations and just walked around to see things for myself. So, sadly, I don’t have a lot of factual knowledge about this temple or even the name of it. I do know that it was quite beautiful and that taking pictures was perfectly fine. I think this is not only a temple , but also a major tourist spot for tour groups going to the Mekong Delta.
Anyways, after this stop, we stopped at a rest stop. Sort of like those rest stops on the side of highways in the US or even in Korea where you can use the restroom and grab some food. I was incredibly happy to be stopping here. Of course, I had to pee. We used the rest room, grabbed a drink, and bought some nice little Vietnamese hats (you will see them later on in this post :)).
The rest stop was really quite lovely. There was a little nice little relaxing garden/pond type of thing. It was a really wonderful little break from the tour van 🙂
Now, feeling a little more refreshed. We hopped back into the tour van and on to the next stop. It was actually getting on the boat! Woo! I was actually under the impression that we would be on a boat for more of the trip, but we weren’t. Both boat trips lasted for a total of less than 25 minutes. It was one of those enjoy it while it lasts things.
Isn’t my hat totally awesome?
The sky (and hair)…
Dirty, boat filled water
Again, my lovely hat
No hats + wind
Even though this boat ride was short, I wasn’t upset. We had the wind, the brown water view, a few (read: so many) other tourist boats surrounding us, and a very talkative tour guide.
But, my feelings were:
Now, the next part of this one day tour I sort of expected. I read tons of reviews on it and it was a complaint or comment of nearly every person. It was about the coconut candy making shop and the pushy tour guide plus workers.
Here’s the deal and what I learned while we were there: the tour guide gets a percentage of anything you buy while at the coconut candy factory. So, our tour guide was annoyingly pushing us to buy everything from coconut candy (which we did and it made average gifts) to snake infused alcohol to some sort of banana tree crafts.
We liked seeing how to the candy was made. I don’t like coconut so I didn’t enjoy the taste, but Jaehoon said it was alright. I gave some of the coconut candy to a my coworkers and a few liked it and others didn’t seem to care about it at all (which could say more about them than the candy, but anyways).
Jaehoon enjoying his Coconut Popsicle in his cool hat.
Our tour didn’t only include the coconut candy workshop, but also a restaurant visit on a nearby site. Now, the food was included with the tour. The drinks were not. So, we didn’t get to choose the food. I think this would be fine for the non-picky eaters. Unfortunately, I am not one of those
people. Eeek.
Our lunch..
My reaction to our lunch..
A beer..
After lunch, Jaehoon decided to be adventurous and play with a humongous snake.
My thoughts on this:
After the disappointing lunch, we were exhausted. It was incredibly hot outside and we had been walking for a very long time. But, the tour was not over.
We took another smaller boat on a small river canal of the Delta. The boat was very small and a very old woman was rowing us along. We did have the pay her as instructed by the tour guide. Apparently, she only makes money from rowing tourists through the canal. It wasn’t much money, but it was quite amazing how such an old woman had such power and grit. My grandmother barely washes the dishes and works in the garden without complaining about how dirty and awful it is.
This boat ride lasted a total of about 5 minutes, but again…we had to enjoy it while it lasted. But I was seriously exhausted after this and we still had one more thing to do. This last thing was my least favorite part of the Mekong Delta trip…even worse than the whole, entire fish for lunch part.
Alligators! NOOOOO!
I watch Animal Planet and National Geographic shows, I know that alligators are not a joke. This whole little show here seemed absolutely ridiculous. Tourist could buy meat and dangle it on a string above the alligators and awe at the snapping at it. Screw that, at least be kind and appreciate the deathly fear alligators should bestow upon humans.
I protested, in my own very silent way. I walked away, visibly upset. The tour guide couldn’t figure out the problem. It was so obvious. Duh. I don’t like alligators, but also people shouldn’t be cruel to them. Have a little humanity in the third world, please. Just please.
Now after this, I really just wanted to go back to the hotel, take a shower, and get a real and proper dinner….but NO. We had to visit one more tourist temple. The Cao Dai Temple as seen on the New York Times. The Cao Dai Temple is extremely beautiful no matter how exhausted and unwilling to go one might be. It truly is one of the most visually stunning temples I’ve ever seen.
Of course, being the not so great tour guide attendee, I sort of ignored the tour guide and went about the temple on my own. The colors and design of the temple were incredibly bright and vivid. The grounds were well kept and it seemed extremely touristy as one of the followers of this religion tried to distribute a CD and video to all of us in English.
After about a 10 hour day that seemed longer than 2 weeks, we were back in our hotel in Ho Chi Minh City. I still don’t love going on group tours and I still have my same opinions on them as I did when we started, but can and do appreciate the ease of having a guided group tour versus going at it alone and having a lot of struggle and pain (especially going to the Mekong Delta).
Despite, all the bad things (alligators and fish for lunch), we had a good time. We recently saw the Mekong Delta on a TV program and felt quite accomplished to have went there. 🙂
Perhaps Bananas 