The boat ride on the delta. Notice how the rower is sitting.

Joanna holding the snake

Day 17: The Mekong Delta.

We started our morning semi-early again. We made a decision that we were just not going to have enough time to head overnight for the Mekong Delta, so we had to do a day trip. Overall it was so-so. Our personal guide on the Delta was awesome; she was a cute, sarcastic and witty 27 year old. She noticed that our friend Bob was not coupled up, so she let him know that she would be his girlfriend for the day. Our first stop involved walking along a path to head to a place to eat fruit. There was a family singing (I bought the cd), what sounded like some traditional music. This should have been a good hint that there were people selling local goods; because, that was the theme for the day. The whole, "some chopsticks?" thing in Hoi An has really become a theme in Vietnam. One neat experience that we had was a trip down a small little river in a row boat. It was a great experience, mostly because we had the opportunity to see locals rowing (or motoring) past us and to see the vegetation. It really felt like a jungle environment. The experience was sort of lessened when we trip ended and we got off our boats with about 20 loud, Japanese tourists. We did some more walking around the island to sample different candies, fruits and food. Along the way we also stopped by a honeycomb and a snake. We were all brave enough to pick up the honeycomb and wrap the snake around us. There was a long break for lunch where we had some local food such as elephant ear fish, some sort of sweet rice concoction, some fantastic barbeque pork (possibly the best pork I’ve had on the trip) and of course shrimp. After lunch we headed back to our van for a long ride back, where everyone crashed.

We had some time left in the afternoon, so we quickly headed out to the market, the major result of which was the purchase of about 70 dvd’s by yours truly. Part of the fun for DVD shopping is looking at the descriptions. For instance, Hamburger Hill is a “love story.” The problem is that we can’t keep the cases, to make it easier to bring them into the country. The entire dvd purchasing took about two hours, but its well worth it just to see locals buying their dvds, to read the descriptions and of course to get a dvd for less than $1.

We ended the day with steak – this time at an Argentinean steak house called Amigos. It was fantastic and included a salad bar and bread. I ate a lot of pasta salad at the salad bar, a couple pieces of bread, my 400 g Australian rib-eye steak and a crème brule. The key piece there is 400 g. We had to do the conversion on the gram- ounces thing and I still am not sure if ordered the right amount because it was a massive steak. I did finish most of it though. I did some stretches and took some breaks to make sure there was room. At the end the waiter said that he thought that I could join the 2 Kilo club – meaning that I could finish a 2 Kilo steak. I would be rewarded with a plaque and my picture. I checked it out on the way out the door and it was mostly westerners that had completed it. On my next trip to Saigon, I will definitely try for it.

We were exhausted and didn’t go out for drinks; we have the Cu Chi tunnels tomorrow.