Day #6- Vietnam and the Me Kong Delta

This morning we woke up early at 6am and had breakfast at our hotel. We then we met our tour guide at 7:30am in the lobby. His name is Ken and our driver is Tun. 

Our guide was full of facts. Ho Chi Minh is the largest city in Vietnam with 9 million  people. There are 4.5 million scooters in Ho Chi Minh. 

We went out of the city for about an hour and a half. We stopped at the MeKong rest stop to go the bathroom. 

It was quite a pretty rest stop. We continued out of the city towards the MeKong River. When we finally arrived we headed out on a boat. 

Here is a map of the places we visited on our tour- Unicorn Island, Crocodile Island and the other side of the river. 

These are the boats we took across the river. We were on one all on our own. It was nice to be without a large group, it meant that we could travel at our own pace. 

You can't see it, but the front of the boat has eyes on either side of it, near the black tires. It was said that the Me Kong River was full of crocodiles and the eyes on the boats scared the crocs away. Now there are no wild crocodiles in the river. 

Once we disembarked we headed for a 1.5k walk through plantations. The reward at the end was some fresh fruit locally grown. 

These are coconut trees. You can see the bunches of little coconuts at the center of the picture, near the yellow palm leaf. 

This is the path we walked along. You had to be careful because it was made of mud, there were lots of holes full of water and motor bikes would come zooming up behind you. Bill and Ken, our guide are looking at coconuts. 

Here are a couple of local ladies traveling through the jungle. I love that they are wearing the grass hat. 

Look at all the boats. It is popular to get from one place to the next by boat through the jungle. There is also only one river route in and out. 

This is one of the local fruits we got to try. It is about the size of a watermelon. It is called a Jack fruit. It tastes kind of like cantaloupe, with a strange texture and a little off taste. We tried  sapodilla, jack fruit, sour pineapple, papaya, and rambutan. I liked the rambutans  the best. It was sweet and had the texture of a grape. 

While eating our exotic fruit, we were entertained by a group of singers and musicians. They sang 5 Vietnamese songs and you happy and you know it. 

After the songs and fruit, we continued on our walk through the jungle, there were tents set up and a market. Bill bought a durian. He was so excited to try it. We were told it was so expensive, Bill paid 30,000 doung. That is $1.70, doesn't seem to high for us- its all about the experience. I could smell it through the bag and knew I was NOT going to eat any of that fruit. 

Here is more of the market. 

We boarded a paddle boat to head towards a bee farm. We did not know we would be going to a bee farm. We were unprepared- Bill is highly allergic to bee stings- we did not have Benadryl nor an Eppi-pen. We were literally taking a huge risk.       

Here is Bill eating the durian on the paddle boat. How more native can he be?!?. He is what he has to say about the taste: the first bite brought a sweet coffee taste. The second bite tasted more like almonds that were a little spoiled. With each bite the flavor worsened. After the eighth bite the flavor was that of sweet garbage. You would first taste the sweetness of the sugar then there was an after taste of pure spoiled garbage. An experience to be sure. 

As you can see, this is a highly trafficked area of the river. People going in both directions. 

Please excuse my vampire husband. He has to be weird in pictures sometimes. 

As we excited the jungle we came to a pier. Here we would be visiting a bee farm and trying some tea with honey. 

On our walk in we came across a banana flower that had not been cut. This is how bananas would grow if the farmer did not cut the flower back when it bloomed. I think it's so weird- one that they know the fruit will get bigger if they cut it back and two that bananas could be so small. 

Here is our guide Ken with the bees. The bees did not swarm or rely bother us. First question I asked was if they sting, Ken said this type does not have a stinger. I am not sure I totally believe him, but Bill made it out alive! 

Here she is making the tea for us. It was honey, bee pollen (whatever that is) hot water and a shikuwasha lime squeezed in and mixed. It was very tasty. 

See part two- there were too many pictures to load into one blog post. 

Day #6- Hotel #3- City #3