From blazing heat getting off the plane to monsoonal rain outside the terminal, it seems we've left the unseasonal dry of Cambodia a lot further behind than the one hour flight would suggest. The torrential rain doesn't last long and just results in even greater humidity.
Another new hotel, another meet-the-crew meeting of our new group (we and the 5 McDonalds provide continuity), and another First Night dinner reached via taxi through the unfathomable chaos of Saturday night Saigon traffic. Over 20,000 traffic deaths each year is easily believed.
Dinner was our second, significant learning of Vietnam: man, there's no way anyone's going to let us get away from dinner until we're uncomfortably overfull. Happily, chilli's back on the menu. Typical salad, spring rolls, noodle soup, tofu, fruit and more ensured that we waddled up to our room to sleep. This was a little more difficult than we'd guessed, because Saturday night in Saigon is noisy indeed. Vietnamese are prolific users of their bike and car horns plus like to advertise with loud speakers driving through the streets in the middle of the night. Well we believed it was advertising, our Vietnamese language skills are still limited.
So it was, a little glassy, we hopped onto our small, air conditioned (woohoo) bus and headed off down to the Mekong Delta. A diverting couple of hours, featuring everything from insane Saigon traffic, paddy fields with water buffalo, the expressway (no scooters or motorbikes permitted, but still seemingly lawless), stops for the "happy room" (so-called because apparently you go there when you're unhappy and emerge happy), roadside repairs for Andrew's sunglasses, and more. All the while our guide, Nguyen, provided a wide ranging insight into just about everything.
Prior to embarkation, Tracey and others picked up typical hats......they almost look local, can't think why no one has made the mistake of confusing them yet.
The Mekong Delta region of Vietnam is home to around 21 million people. And, for a miracle, you wouldn't know it. The pace of life is significantly slower, and you just don't see crowds. We were treated to a manual paddle through backwater canals (think less Venice and more Poitou Charente) where we caught glimpses of everyday, quiet local life.
The delta is host to heaps of trades and enterprises, of which we visited a wide variety to get insight into local cottage industry and life. A brickworks (very hot), nursery (hadn't really considered the agricultural approach much prior to this), fish sauce works (a vat of fermenting anchovies smells every bit as good as you're imagining), rice puffing, rice paper manufacturing (Andrew proved more skilled at eating than making), and more. Everything in the region is made by hand.
Lunch is one of the local fish they call "elephant ear", plus another 3-4 courses as is their custom. Tracey (as usual) is the ring leader for encouraging others to hold the 25kg python, one of local residents.
Accommodation for the night is a local homestay. It doesn't have the conveniences of our usual hotels: no airconditioning, no solid walls, no real beds...however it incongruously has WiFi and thankfully a fridge full of cold drinks. Whilst Andrew took advantage of the cold drinks and a deck chair, Tracey strolled the farm lands and villages. The local people are extremely friendly and cope well with tourists who wanted to photograph their goats.
After dinner (in true culturally hospitable style, there was loads more food than we needed - including some we'd prepped ourselves) we retire from outside to what appeared the formal (read "mother of pearly inlaid") seats. Traditional songs and music were accompanied by tea - not rice wine, that was immediately after dinner and, for the ambitious, for much later as well.
We suspect ourselves of overthinking the narratives, which were ostensibly typical peasant themes. Think "girl and boy meet under sweet summer stars, with nothing to show but their devotion and earnestness to procreate and prosper, and therefore endure lengthy periods of toil that eventually lead to transcendence". With a small amount of imagination these could have been viewed as the "idealised noble peasant" memes that were so favoured by communist regimes. Hmmm aren't we in Vietnam?
No-one slept well. The echoes of the boat engines, as they industriously worked through the night, sounded like Apocalypse Now.
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