Mekong River Trip

Today we took a very interesting tour to Ben Tre in the Mekong Delta area.  The tour focused on rural life and we visited several cottage industries along the way, including a brick making facility, a coconut candy making shop, and a house where straw mats were being weaved.  We travelled by several different modes of transport including a junk, motorized cyclo (or tuk tuk), and a wooden sampan.  For most of the trip, it felt like we were deep in the jungle, especially when we were travelling by tuk tuk to our lunch spot.  We stopped for a lovely lunch, complete with elephant fish, spring rolls, soup, shrimp, garlic rice and fresh pineapple.  Delicious!

Maya at the brick factory

Watching the kiln being stoked with rice husks

The clay bricks are heated for 2 weeks in the kiln

Here you can see the woman going for another load of rice husks to keep the fire going

After the brick factory, we boarded a junk and took a ride up the Mekong River

 They served us fresh coconut juice, which was safe for Aidan to try

There were lots of junks on the river, many of them carrying tourists

Several local homes could be seen 

as well as fisherman and fishing nets along the edges of the river

Our next stop was a coconut candy-making place, where they showed us how they carved out the coconut

 Then crushed it and finally 

 boil it with sugar to make the coconut candy, which is like a taffy.

 Here the lady is cutting  up the candy before it gets wrapped.  There were lots of samples and it was delicious!

They also served us some local fruit, including jack fruit, bananas, pomelos, longan fruit (like lychees) and a red fruit (pear or apple type fruit).  The fruit was served with chili and salt.  They also gave us tea flavoured with passion fruit and served with local honey.  Very tasty!

Then back on the junks again through a narrower stretch of the river

 You could see the roots of the palm trees along the way

Our next stop was to see how the locals weave straw mats, used to sleep on

 Then we boarded a tuk tuk and travelled through dense jungle to our lunch stop

We travelled through several villages until we got to a nice restaurant 

They served us elephant fish, which they cut up and put into spring rolls with pineapple and herbs.

We also had some delicious local shrimp, garlic rice, soup and pineapple.

Maya with restaurant eating area in background.  Very nice, considering it felt like we were deep in the jungle

After lunch we observed a local funeral

Then we boarded these boats and headed back 

It was getting hot, so our guide gave us some conical hats

Aidan got one too!

I'm sure they have used these types of boats for centuries

 All in it was a great day and it felt like we had an idea of rural life in the Mekong.