Boating on the Mekong

Breakfast today was in the Saigon cafe in our hotel. The boys chowed down on an eclectic mix of breakfast food - BBQ pork, rice, sausage, beef samosas and waffles. Flynn noticed that the sign at the toast station said  "glutton free" so we made sure not to eat too much. After breakfast, and a vigorous game of table tennis, we met up with our tour group. Our two guides, Drew from Hawaii and Tony from Hanoi, are very upbeat and fun. We have a group of 23, with 8 children in total. 

We started off with a bus trip to the Mekong river. On the way we passed rice paddies with randomly placed graves (quite elaborate in some cases). Tony said that this practice was traditional but was cracked down on now. We also passed many roadside coffee houses with hammocks instead of chairs. The guides had a grab bag of Vietnamese snacks which we were allowed to choose from.  When we reached the boat ramp, we were issued with a bamboo hat - there is a photo below. 

The river was brown and full of water hyacinth and there were boats selling vegetables everywhere. The glimpse of life on the river was fascinating. Our group managed to ask all the questions we secretly wanted to know - what do they use for toilets, do they give birth on the boat, etc etc. we bought a durian from one of the boats and everyone smelled it. Then we were each given a tidy, clean, cling wrapped dish of fruit to sample. There was a tiny banana, a longan, a rambutan and a rose apple. 

 We then stopped at a family business that processed coconut and rice. I sampled the snake rice wine (metho anyone?) and we all tried the coconut candy and the rice candy. Campbell was chosen to try stirring the rice husks to pop them. The boys held a giant python for a photo opp but I managed to avoid it. We then hopped back on the boat to go downriver for lunch at a lovely river cafe. We had made a number of friends by this time and lunch was fun (and tasty!). We tried Durian (urk) and jackfruit (like melon).

The bus ride back was enlivened by snacks, a few games and a good differentiation session between the east and the west. We had a bit of downtime in the hotel and Flynn and I sneaked out to buy a red bean ice block. Apparently it was "bad".

Dinner turned out to be at the top of "Stark tower". From floor 51 we could see all of Saigon laid out around us. To my chagrin, Josh wore his tuxedo shirt, which was quite a hit with some of our group. We sat with 4 people we had made friends with earlier in the day - twin siblings from LA and two of their work colleagues. The boys were troopers and made social conversation as needed. We are now settling in for the night.

Below are photos of the graves, the one of the hammock cafes, and team Starrett in their fetching hats