Cai Rang, some 7 km upstream from Can Tho, is the largest
floating market in the Mekong Delta. We were up bright and early and at the
landing stage before 8 o’clock. Trang hired a boat and we chugged up the river,
grateful for the cooling breeze as the morning sun was already hot.
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| A barge load of sand goes down the Mekong |
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| A floating petrol station near Cai Rang |
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| Vegetable stall, Cai Rang |
Larger boats had their produce in the hold, only a turnip or a papaya tied to the mast indicated what the sold, while smaller boats with long tailed outboard motors scooted amongst them and men and women in conical hats rowed heavily laden sampans, standing up and straining on oars crossed scissor-like in front of them.
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| Rowing a sampan, Cai Rang |
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| The boatman may be smiling, but the boat is far too large for three passengers |
Eventually we bumped up against a boat load of pineapples. I clambered onto the deck and watched a woman peeling a pineapple with a machete, trimming off the skin and then slicing a spiral groove round the fruit to removing the rest of the outer parts.
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| Sculpting a pineapple, Cai Rang |
When she had finished she hacked it in four, giving a piece each to Lynne, Trang, the boatman and me. Holding it by the stalk, I ate it like a lollipop. I am on record as saying that the pineapples of Kerala are the finest in the world. This lacked their faint coconut-y flavour, but was the softest, sweetest, juiciest pineapple I have ever eaten. The central woody core we cut out of pineapples in England, did not exist, there was only soft luscious fruit right through to its heart.
As we left they started hauling up more pineapples from below.
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| As fine a piece of fruit as this world can supply Cai Rang |
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| Pineapple porn |
I have long held the view that if some bizarre turn of events meant I could only eat one fruit for the rest of eternity, I would chose pineapples; now I know which pineapples and where to get them.
Pottering back downstream we diverted into a side channel
and stopped off at a rice processing plant. We stepped onto the jetty, removed
our shoes and walked, very gingerly across a ceramic tiled floor made as
slippery as ice by a coating of rice dust. |
| Spurned mangoes slink away |
Some types of rice are sold as grain, some ground into flour,
but all are treated to the same process of husking and polishing. The venerable
machinery rattled away as Trang described how the stalks and some of the
husks are sold as fuel to the brickworks we had seen the day before, the softer
husks are turned into cattle food and the grains are polished for human
consumption.
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| Ancient rice polishing machine, or perhaps it's a dehusker - who knows? Cai Rang |
Impressive as this use of the whole plant is, the health and safety aspects of the factory were troubling. Apart from the hard, slippery floor, the moving machinery was unguarded and workers wore no masks though the air was thick with floating particles. To my untrained eye the conditions also looked right for a dust explosion should there be an unexpected spark in the wrong place. To call the working conditions Dickensian might be a slur on Victorian industrial practices.
We returned to Can Tho and watched a group embarking on a
long decorated boat. It was, Trang told us, a betrothal party, a stage between
engagement and marriage, and was traditionally attended by the groom’s family
only. The bride-to-be wore a red dress of embroidered silk (well, I noticed it
was red, Lynne recorded the other details), and the groom a white suit.
Everybody, the future bride and groom included, wore beaming smiles and all seemed unfeasably happy.
Returning to the hotel we packed up, checked out and set off
on the long journey back across the bridge to Vinh Long and then to My Tho
where the main road from Saigon reaches the delta.
At My Tho we stopped in a scruffy street beside a set of
iron gates which were opened by a man in a saffron robe. Trang had arranged
lunch, he told us, at the Phuoc Long nunnery, but as all the people we saw there
were men (though none except the be-robed door opener were monks) he may have meant monastery
Places had been laid for us at a long table in a room
stuffed with heavy wooden furniture, old vases and Buddhist statues. At one end
was a thangka in an ornate wooden frame, at the other a painting of a venerated
Buddhist priest and an enormous decorated bell.
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| A framed thangka and Chinese vases, Phuoc Long My Tho |
As we were in a monastery the food was, naturally, vegetarian,
but none the worse for that. We ate rice paper rolled round herbs and
vegetables, fried spring rolls with bean sprouts, crispy yellow pancakes like those we had enjoyed at Hue, but here stuffed with beansprouts rather than pork
and prawns, a mushroom dish that looked – and even tasted – like chicken’s
feet, salad, fried rice, soup and dips. There was an enormous mountain of food,
but we made a creditable dent in it and were careful to try everything.
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| Lynne, lunch, a venerated monk and a large bell, Phuoc Long My Tho |
After lunch a young man who lived there, though he
was not actually a monk, showed us the rooms upstairs. He taught music, he
said, and some English, and was also taking English lessons. He was preparing, as
so many overseas students do, for examinations set by UCLES (University of
Cambridge Local Examination Syndicate – though this is an unusual application of
the word ‘local’) and complained that he was hampered by having an American
teacher who did not quite speak the language the way UCLES thought was
appropriate. We sympathised.
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| Dark, heavy furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory Phuoc Long, My Tho |
The rooms were a treasure trove of Chinese pottery and old
furniture, much of it inlaid with mother of pearl and ivory. One spectacular
vase from the Ming dynasty was decorated with 11000 Chinese characters, all
hand painted before firing. The artefacts had come from the royal palace in Hue
when the monarchy was dissolved in the 1940s.
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| Vase with 11000 Chinese characters |
In the small shrine we were invited to light a joss stick and ask for a blessing. We respectfully approached the Buddha and his two rows of supporters with incense sticks in hand. I always try to take these things seriously, but looking at the statue of Buddha and seeing Julian Clary staring back at me did not make that easy. (Non-British readers may find this link helpful).
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| Venerating Julian Clary My Tho |
There is, we presume, more of Phuoc Long and we only saw the
‘guest rooms’ but it is not a show monastery (or possibly nunnery). The same
cannot be said of the Vinh Trang Pagoda nearer the city centre.
Where Phuoc Long was full of dark, almost sombre, furniture
in curtained rooms, Vinh Trang was bright colourful and out in the full glare
of the sun.
Originally completed in 1850, it was seriously damaged ten
years later during fighting between French colonial forces and the army of
Emperor Tu Duc, whose mausoleum we had seen in Hue. There was more major
rebuilding in 1907 after a tropical storm.
The style is variously described as ‘like a rajah’s palace’
or ‘blending classical European and Asian architecture’ while others talk of
Cambodian influences. To me it looked like a typical piece of southern
Vietnamese exuberance, not entirely in the best of taste but always vigorous,
even flamboyant.
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| Vinh Trang Pagoda behind its luxuriant garden My Tho |
In front of the façade is a garden of tropical profusion,
while to the left sits an enormous ‘Happy Buddha’. I had been frequently
greeted with the phrase ‘Happy Buddha’ when sitting down in restaurants, I have
even had my stomach patted. The first time I was offended but I learned to go
with the flow and even take it as a compliment. The Vietnamese consider being
well-nourished a sign of prosperity; they do not (yet) live in our strange
inverted world where obesity and poverty walk hand in hand.
The temple also has a small artificial mountain (a touch of the Disney) and a courtyard lined with monks' cells beyond which are more courtyards, more statues and a hall, but Vinh Trang is not about inside, it is a place to be enjoyed outside.
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| Two Happy Buddhas Vinh Trang Pagoda, My Tho |
The temple also has a small artificial mountain (a touch of the Disney) and a courtyard lined with monks' cells beyond which are more courtyards, more statues and a hall, but Vinh Trang is not about inside, it is a place to be enjoyed outside.
We spent the rest of the afternoon driving back to Ho Cho
Minh City where we checked into the Vien Dong Hotel for the third time. The
doorman greeted us like old friends, which either indicates our tipping had
been too generous, or not generous enough and he was hoping for more when we finally left
for good. We shall never know.
That evening Lynne disappointed me by eating fish and chips;
the fish may have been Vietnamese river cobbler, but it was still fish and
chips. I am not sure exactly which part of Asia my chicken curry originated
from, but at least it was Asia.
Vietnam North to South
Prelude: Raybans in Heathrow and Saigon
Part 3: Ha Long Bay
Part 4: Lao Cai, Coc Ly Market and Sa Pa
Part 11: Da Nang
Part 12: Hoi An and My Son
Part 13:Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)
THE END
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