Monday, December 17, 2007

Day 11

Today we went to the Mekong Delta, about two hours drive south of Saigon.
It is a much more tropical looking area, nothing like the Ho Chi Minh City.
Once we arrived to our location, we got onto a big boat and went for a cruise down the Mekong river. Then we stopped at a small platform (below) to get onto a smaller boat that held around 8-10 people. Then later we needed to get onto smaller boats, that only hold 4 people!



This boat took us to the first of four islands where our tour guide "Mr. Lovely" showed us how the Mekong people make coconut candy and banana wine (35% alc.). Coconuts are used for so many things from drinking the milk, eating it, making candy, tools and little gifts.

The next island we saw how the Mekong people extract the honey from bee hives. We sat at had honey lemon tea made from the bee's that were flying all around us. As we drank the tea, "Mr. Lovely" brought out a very large snake for us all to touch and hold. Poor Nina was terrified of snakes and everyone made her hold it.



The next island was for lunch where we got an included meal and had the option to buy the famous "Mekong River Elephant Ear fish" (see below). The fish wasnt included in the price, but we got one to try, and it was very nice, despite what it looks like on the outside.



The last island was for fruit and music from the "Unicorn people". All the islands actually had names (i.e. unicorn island) but I couldnt make out what the names were over the speaker on the boat.

Finally, after a great day of sight seeing, we all headed back to Paco and my room for a bit of a party. Long story short, Alot of alcohol was consumed and my room was an absolute mess! Between spilt drinks, food and pistachio wars it was pretty bad. After we quieted down a bit, we managed to clean it quite well, the cleaners did the rest. Oh yea, and I need to mention that Mike got drunk enough to sleep Paco for the whole night... enough said... lol

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