The Mekong Delta (2) To Vinh Long and Can Tho: Vietnam North to South Part 15

Fruit, Bricks and Music

Vietnam

From our Homestay to a Fruit Garden

After breakfasting on omelettea and French bread – a welcome relic of colonialism – and yet more fruit, and we said farewell to our hosts.

About to leave our hosts, Mekong Delta

It had not occurred to me that the Mekong was tidal, but it is here and there was insufficient water for our boat, so Trang found a man who would row us to a larger stream where we could make a rendezvous.

Although it was early, the sun was strong and the boatman lent us local conical hats which, he insisted, would be far more effective than our own. I looked and felt a bit of a fake, but he had a point; they are made for the climate and are amazingly light and cool.

Floating through the Mekong Delta in the right sort of hat

It seemed the moment to forget about a war which had finished almost forty years ago and just enjoy the sunshine and the sensation of moving almost silently along the waterway, surrounded by the life of the river and the dense vegetation.

Life in the Mekong Delta

As our boat nosed its way through the rafts of floating water hyacinth we thought we heard the ooh-ooh noise of a monkey. ‘It’s not a monkey,’ Trang told us, ‘it’s a bird, a coucal’. He scanned the vegetation just above the waterline and then pointed. We were moving and wildlife rarely stays still for long, so I saw nothing but Lynne glimpsed a bird the size of a large magpie with a blue-green head, a brown body and a long blue-green tail (for a YouTube video of a coucal, click here). It is, I learn, a non-parasitic cuckoo which is quite common from India eastwards, though not always easy to spot.

We eventually reached a larger stream after a pleasant and restful journey - at least for those not providing the motive power. Our boatman from yesterday was waiting to meet us.

We reach a larger stream, Mekong Delta

After a short trip up river we dropped in on a fruit garden. We saw all the fruits we had eaten the day before and some extras - star fruit, which we have encountered before, and mangosteens, which we have not and look nothing like mangoes; they will not be ripe for a month or two. And then there were durians. A ripe durian smells like a badly maintained chemical toilet; it is reputedly illegal to carry one on public transport in Malaysia, and if that is not true it ought to be. There is a school of thought that says that once you have got past the smell they are wonderful. Lynne and I disagree. We each ate a durian pastry once – we bought them in a dim sum restaurant without knowing quite what we were ordering (we do this a lot). We ate it, but it repeated all afternoon with a flavour we would have dearly loved to flush away. [update: Our 2017 trip to Malaysia persuaded us to soften our stance on durians. 'Smells like hell, tastes like heaven' as the Malays say.]

Lynne under a jackfruit tree, Mekong Delta

Visiting a Brick Works

We crossed an even larger branch of the river, busy with fishing boats and rice barges, to reach a brickworks.

Rice barge on the Mekong

Being Easter Sunday the factory was quiet – only 10% of Vietnamese are Christians, but the French legacy includes a proper respect for ‘le weekend’. Some bricks were being made, though, a labour intensive process requiring the clay to be thrown in at one end, and the bricks to be manually separated from the excess clay at the other.

Brick making in the Mekong Delta

The kilns were also loaded and unloaded by hand, which at least allowed for a quality control process.

There's something happening in this kiln and I'm looking into it

They did not just make bricks; other earthenware products could be found in the kilns – I always wondered where those wretched gnomes came from, now I know.

Bloody gnomes

The original owner of the factory became rich, and when he died he had himself buried on the factory floor so he could continue to keep an eye on the workers.

The boss (retired)

Music

Another short potter up the river brought us to a garden house rather like those in Hue. We sat in front of the ancestor altar – an impressive cabinet inlaid with mother of pearl - and were treated to tea and fruit.

Cabinet inlaid with mother of pearl

We were entertained by two musicians, one on guitar, the other playing a variety of traditional instrument, and a singer. It was less traditional Vietnamese folk than the Quang Ho musicians we had seen near Hanoi, and their songs dealt with contemporary themes. This was clearly Trang’s sort of music and several times he was invited to join in. ‘This music’, he said regretfully, ‘is too sad for the new generation of young people.’ They seem to prefer their sounds Gangnam style.

Folk musicians who resolutely ensured all photographs would be taken into the sun

Through Vinh Long to Can Tho

Forty minutes sailing brought us to the city of Vinh Long where we said ‘goodbye’ to our boatman and ‘hello again’ to our driver.

Dodging the motorbikes with his customary skill, he quickly drove us to Can Tho, the largest city in the delta and, with 1.2 million people, the fifth biggest in Vietnam. The Vinh Long to Can Tho journey time has been much reduced by the Can Tho bridge which opened in April 2010. At 2.75Km it is the longest cable span bridge in South East Asia.

Approaching Can Tho bridge

Once we had arrived, lunch became our first priority. Trang took us to a large restaurant packed with local families and, we were pleased to note, no other foreigners. They did, though, find an English menu and we chose spicy frog, squid in oyster sauce and soup with pork, squid and prawns along with assorted vegetables and the inevitable rice. And excellent they all were, too.

It was an excellent meal and that look on my face is supposed to be a smile. Oh well,

A Hot Afternoon in Can Tho and a Hot Pot for Dinner

Well fed we checked into our hotel and, once the hottest part of the day was past, took a walk along Can Tho’s very posh corniche. They have a statue of Ho Chi Minh, who like the musicians, was looking at us out of the sun. Unlike the musicians, though, we had an opportunity to return next morning when the problem had solved itself to take this picture...

Lynne and Ho Chi Minh on the corniche at Can Tho

After buying some clothes for our grandson in the smart little market we wandered back to the hotel thinking that the roof bar might be good spot for a coffee. It was closed, but the roof did give us a fine view across to the bridge and demonstrate just how much water and how little land there is in the delta country.

The Can Tho Bridge

Back out on the street we found a café and were brought two small cups with metal filters on top - the usual arrangement, at least in the south. We sat for a while watching Can Tho pass by. Then, as there was no coffee in my cup despite repeated fiddling with the filter, I sent it back; its replacement worked only a little better.

Following the ‘safety in numbers’ rule a group of four foreigners spied us from the far side of the park, made a bee line for our café and sat at the next table. We should have asked for commission.

We walked back to the hotel passing these two men playing Chinese chess (for more street chess in more countries, click here) and beside them a sugar cane crusher. Drinking crushed sugar cane on a hot afternoon is always refreshing, although Lynne is a little squeamish about the juice flowing over ice presumably made from tap water. Not letting this put us off we exchanged a few thousand dong for a couple of glasses. The drink was resorative, and did no harm.

Street chess, Can Tho

In the evening we went with Trang to a street restaurant. Metal tables and plastic stools were set out beside the road and food appeared from a small kitchen in a hole in the wall. We had hot pot, a cook-it-yourself arrangement with a lot of green vegetables, some buffalo meat and buffalo liver. We never did manage to cook the buffalo to a reasonably degree of tenderness, but the liver was good, though Lynne thought it a little more strongly flavoured than she would have liked. There was also a huge plate of roasted chicken, so there was plenty to eat, beer to drink and remarkably little to pay.

Lynne, Trang and a hot pot, Can Tho

Vietnam North to South

Prelude: Raybans in Heathrow and Saigon
Part 1: Hanoi (1) Ethnic Minorities, The Old City and Water Puppets
Part 2: Hanoi (2) Bat Trang, Quan Ho Music and Fighting Cocks
Part 3: Ha Long Bay
Part 4: Lao Cai, Coc Ly Market and Sa Pa
Part 5: Trekking from Sa Pa (1), Sa Pa to Ta Van
Part 6: Trekking from Sa Pa (2) Ta Van to Ban Den
Part 7: Trekking from Sa Pa (3), Around Ban Den then back to Hanoi
Part 8: Hanoi (3), The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and the Temple of Literature
Part 9: Hue (1), The Citadel, The Battle of Hue 1968 and Some New Things to Eat
Part 10: Hue (2), A Self-Immolating Monk, an Impotent Emperor and Imperial Dinner
Part 11: Da Nang
Part 12: Hoi An and My Son
Part 13: Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
Part 14: The Mekong Delta (1), Can Bei and a Cornucopia of Fruit
Part 15: The Mekong Delta (2), To Vinh Long and Can Tho
Part 16: The Mekong Delta (3): Cai Rang and My Tho
Part 17: The Cu Chi Tunnels and the Cao Dai Great Temple

THE END