March 7, 2024 HCMC, Vietnam 59 days left of 138

If you check out the heading above you will see we are now officially less than 2 months before we complete this adventure of traveling the world. This also means our new grandson Drew is due in 2 months, Harper is coming up on 15 months, Sarah is closer to completing her Junior year of High School, K is soon to be a High School graduate, and life goes on. We hope this is finding all our friends and family doing well. We miss you all, and can't wait to reconnect when we arrive home.

Today we are taking of on a ten and a half hour Mekong Delta excursion. I have to tell you it is an odd feeling being in this country. We have had one guide that his family attempted to be part of the boat people to escape the country, and the other guide who gives us glimpses of what it is like in Vietnam currently. Today's guide let us know if we had political questions, he was willing to try to answer them, but he would pick somewhere private as he says they have informants everywhere. He let us know for the first 10 years after Vietnam became one country the people in the south were starving. The land was taken away from individuals, and became Government property. The property that was owned also became Government property, this means if you owned a cow or ox, it became a coop animal, the same with tractors. Now since everyone used everything, but no one owned it, no one took care of anything, so the animals died, and the tractor quite running. The Government also told them what to grow on the land. They wanted potatoes, and corn grown, and the land wasn't made for that, so the crops were not successful. Vietnam was failing as a country, they had to import everything, and were not exporting anything. A new head of the communist government decided to allow people to work for themselves, and this has helped get the country back on track. Now they get to choose what they grow, and they are successful being the 3rd highest exporter of Coffee, and they are second for rice. They are also growing in textiles, and electronics, they are open for business. He praised former President Clinton for his part in lifting the trade embargo to Vietnam. Other things we learned, if you purchase a home, you only own it for 50 years, then it reverts back to government. The elderly are forced to work to now pay rent if they outlive their ownership. People are making on average about 11 dollars per day. The people only are interested in living peacefully and being taken care of.

Now on to the Mekong Delta.

We continue to be fascinated by the traffic. The women have some kind of apron they wrap around themselves to be able to drive and ride on the scooters/motorcycle while wearing skirts or dresses. They also were wearing masks long before the pandemic. They wear either a mask, double mask, or full face mask to avoid the sun and pollution. Having lighter skin means they are wealthier, as they don't have to be working outside in the sun.

The shops are very specialized. I was surprised by the size and apparent weight of the furniture in this shop. Most of the homes here are very small.

This is a small place serving food. If you could see the tables, they look like something kids would sit at. Much too small for most of us Americans. It seems most people here do not cook on their own as it takes to much time, and street food is cheap.

This is a field of rice that is filled with water. They still do everything by hand, using their thumb to make the hole to drop in the rice plant, hand cutting the rice down, plowing with an ox, and field burning.

We are arriving to our boat that we will travel the Mekong Delta.

For what ever reason our boats were not able to meet us at the first dock, so we walked a short distance to the ferry dock. We were standing there waiting to board our boat when the ferry came in. Now imagine 40 American travelers waiting to get on the boat. We were across the full ferry landing. There was no room for people and motor bikes to get off or on the ferry. I don't know what people were thinking. They have their cameras up and still are clueless as to what is about to happen.                                                                                                                         

We successfully made it onto our boat. Below are the next group ready to board from the ferry dock. Notice all it is concrete down to the waters edge, the ferry pulls in with the front of the ferry angled down. That is the way it is built, very primitive, but it works.                                                             

The green you see is a water hyacinth. It will produce a pink flowers. Parts of it are harvested and dried to make purses, table mats or baskets. You can find them at IKEA. Parts of is are also eaten.

Notice the eyes on the front of this boat. This is to protect them from the monsters or evil spirits. We are finding the Asians very superstitious. They load these boats down. The water way is busy transporting everything needed.

This is a tidal basin, so everything is prepared for the water level to change every 6 hours.

We were not told what this was, but there is a Catholic population in Vietnam. Notice it in the distance in the previous picture.                                                                                                                              

First stop was a factory making things with coconuts. Notice the spike the woman is using to take the hull off the coconut. She worked on it for a while, than a younger man finished it. If memory serves me they hull 1,000 coconuts a day. They did not tell us how many times they get cut from this piece of equipment. They then move to this tool which is a scraper, here they shred the coconut by hand. The press is used to press all the coconut cream out of the coconut. I missed the picture of heating the coconut cream in a wok with a wood fire under it and a constant stirring mechanism. No burned caramel for them. This mixture is malt syrup and sugar added to coconut milk and cream. This is poured out onto mats to cool, cut into small pieces, wrapped in edible rice paper and all is wrapped in white paper. It was very interesting.

The finished product                                                                                                                   

In the next room this young man was making popped rice. They use sand from the Mekong Delta in a wok. He heats the sand, throws the rice in and it shortly starts popping just like popcorn. Once it has popped he will pour it through a sieve that will leave the popped rice in the top and the sand falls through to be used again. This is then dumped into a square box, and they will use a rolling pin to compact it. The box is scored and when cool it is cut into portions and bagged. They can flavor these. When you go to the grocery store you will see them, we call them rice cakes.

In the corner of this room is this. Any ideas what they are doing here? If you think it looks like a still you would be right. They have to do something to it to get the alcohol content down as it starts out at 64% which is 128 proof. This is made from the rice. They also use the rice hulls and coconut shells and hulls for fuel. All this could be seen burning in the various stoves. Now anyone who knows me knows how hard it is to put the next picture in. Mike took it, and I will post it, but I was ready to walk out of the shop before we even got started. The alcohol is bottled plain, or with any kind of frui  added. The most expensive has snakes, cobra to be exact in it. The snake moonshine has smaller snakes of any kind in the bottom of the bottle. The older population think 2 drinks a day of the snake moonshine helps with arthritic pain.

Some shops also had live snakes in the shop. Ugh, my worse nightmare.

This woman was making edible rice paper. She is working with a warm mat that she would cover with something that looked like parchment paper. she would pour the rice water on the warm paper, spread it thin, cover it with the top immediately to her left, or  our right. She would steam it for around a minute, then carefully she would detach it from the paper and place it on the large round mat to her immediate right, or our left. Here it would cool, then it was moved to larger rectangle mats where 6 papers were left for 4 hours to dry. At this point they are cut to the size they need and used. She makes over 500 of these a day. Notice the rice hulls in the bag and on her work space. She has a small feeder that she pushes the hulls down to under where she is working to keep a fire burning, and the ability to have air reach the fire.

We got back on the boat, and the pictures above are what we saw on our way to our next adventure. Also whew! these pictures made sure I don't have to see the snake picture anymore. That was almost more than I could take. PS if anyone is thinking of getting me some snake moonshine, it is not on my wish list, and you will be forever banned from my gift list. Just saying. LOL

This is our next ride. We were loaded 4 at a time into a small canoe. Our guide took us around a half circle canal that ended back on our boat which had moved to meet us. It was a bout a 20 min ride. Our guide provided me with my hat. Below are some ducks we saw along the canal.

Next stop is lunch. We were bus 7, so we are the last to arrive. The restaurant is open air, with a thatch roof. The menu is set, and has 7 courses that the majority are seafood. They know Mike has a shellfish allergy, but they put shrimp on his plate several times while we are saying no he can't have it. Finely he left the table. His lunch consisted of peanuts, granola bar I packed, and beer. This was the show stopper.

It was called an elephant ear fish that was deep fried. The fish was a mild white fish. They gave us some rice paper to wrap the fish with mint leaves, lettuce, and cucumber. The paper was much thicker, and hard to eat, but the rest was good. Before this was some kind of fish in thin rice paper, then came the shrimp in their shell, rice and chicken, hot and sour soup with shrimp, and fresh fruit. Following the meal they provided us with some entertainment.

We got back on our boat for the trip back to where our bus was parked.

Thank goodness our bus was waiting with the air conditioning running. We are all very hot and tired, it has been a good but exhausting day. One of our friends on the first bus out this morning had to be treated at the restaurant for being over heated. We also heard someone fell into the river, that was not confirmed.

Our bus trip was suppose to be a three hour ride, instead due to an accident ahead, and traffic it took us 5 hours to arrive home. We found out later that was good as the first bus out was the last to arrive back to the ship at 9:30 pm, so for them it was 13 hours of travel.  We counted 13 ambulances on our drive home, so prayers for who ever was needing the care.

Mike took a shower and was ready for lights out immediately. I decided to catch a quick dinner and bring him back something to eat. Mike was awake and drank a little lemonade, but he just wanted sleep. I showered and read when I got to bed. It was lights out for us before the last bus returned.