Berry's SEAJ trip Day 3: Mekong delta tour – pt 1 of 3 (6/8/15)

Booked this tour through the hostel as well. They use TNK travel which is cheap (9$ for cu chi trip and 59 for the 3 day trip of Mekong) but they def take you to places where food is inflated (4-5$ instead of 1-2 on the street) and have these options that seem like they would be included but you have to pay more for (for instance, I paid extra for the home stay the first night, because of that, if I wanted to join the tour for the fishers market early in the morning, I had to pay an extra 5$ to get a scooter to get me to the place where it was (people who paid less for a hotel  stay were right next door and therefore didn't have to pay extra)).

Berry taking a rest in a hammock at the rest stop. He didnt want to share, selfish bear!

Coconut water from a coconut? Berry wants to try it all!

Boat houses. Technically floating houses but since they are floating I guess that makes them boats.

First stop was a place where we had honey tea and some fruits and listened to  some locals sing and play music (our guide played guitar) – this whole thing was them trying to sell batches of their honey, and their cds which is annoying to be pedaled crap but whatever. After this, we take a little rowboat down a narrow, palm-lined river to our next stop, a coconut candy factory that also makes soap and other coconut products. They also had rice wine, where they call anything with alcohol wine apparently cause this wine tasted like spirits not like sake which is rice wine that is actual wine tasting. After that, we took a motorboat to a Buddhist temple with giant statues.

Bee keeper demonstration on how they get their honey for the honey tea and other honey products (it was like Bubba in the honey business)

Berry made a friend while we drank some tea. 

Berry's friend wanted a close up so I took it. These bees were just hanging around. No one got stung that I remember.

We had some of the locals and bee keepers play some songs and our tour guide even got in there and sang along. 

After drinking some tea, we get into the paddle boats and cruise along through the canals.

Peaceful cruise to our next stop. Can see the next boat way up there.

Its a ghost ship!

Our next stop was a coconut everything factory which specialized in coconut candy but made all sorts of stuff with coconut (again with the Bubba assortment). A cool thing was they used the coconut shells to fuel the fire to melt their taffy and cook their coconut for their business. Smart!

Our tour guide was showing us how they shred the coconut. The medieval nature of some of their machines is pretty awesome - no frills, just pure work horse. 

Hydraulic press which squeezed the water out of the coconut to dry it out faster. Each of those pancakes is a bag full of shaved coconut.

Berry is a social bear. Hanging out with his friend at the coconut place. 

Now we get to board a motorboat to go a longer way through the bay.

Cool pagoda we passed on our trip across the bay. 

Beautiful. I kept being amazed at the mix of new and old throughout the region.

Berry found another Buddhist temple on the other side of the bay. These grounds had tons of plants/trees everywhere, many with flowers of all colors and a few huge statues. 

Fountain out front of the main temple in the complex.

Berry was jealous that Buddha got to sleep. We got to explore the grounds for a bit of time as we waiting for our shuttle bus to come get us.

Berry is taking in the sight of the awesome, giant, Buddha statue.

View from in the complex looking at one of the main gates (not the one you walk through) with a giant statue in equally giant lotus flower. 

Berry likes how he can see both his statues from this view.

Berry posing on the front side of the gate from before. Once again, the ornamentation is ridiculous. 

Close up of one side. Dragon fighting a tiger? 

Rice fields on the way to our first night's stay. There are plenty of these fields as the Mekong delta region is one of the top rice producing regions in the world.

That night we stayed in Can Tho where I chose the home-stay which had some of the nicer rooms I would stay in on the whole trip. The family was great as it was 3 generations living together with many animals and lots of space. They were clearly doing well for themselves with this home-stay business as their property had rooms all over it. The dinner was great and we got to learn to roll spring rolls and then drop them in the frier and cook them.

Berry chose the homestay as opposed to the hotel. It was more or less a hotel just outside the city as they  had multiple rooms. Not at all what I was expecting based on previous homestays.

View from my back porch.

Sun setting beyond the trees. View from my back porch again. 

They had a ton of puppies running around. This one was showing off his blue steel.

We learned how to make spring rolls. They were tasty. They used chopsticks to turn the rolls and take them out and what not. Chopsticks are equivalent to a multi tool from what I am learning.

Rice Wine (to them wine = vodka hahah). Again they use the chop stick to puncture the bag and leave the chopstick in there as a cork then slowly remove the chopstick to allow the liquid to flow down it into your glass then stop it back up. Berry was trying to get some of the wine.

The host pouring the bag of rice "wine" like a boss!

We all hung out after dinner with more rice “wine” and at one point there were 4 languages (German, Spanish, Vietnamese and Czech) being spoken at the table and I just sat there in awe as its so cool that you can be in a place and at one table there can be such diversity in people/languages. This was when I realized that the shower set up with the shower, sink, toilet in one room without walls was a common thing in Asia; The shower is just a shower head hooked up to a spigot in the same room as the other water devices.

My room. That bathroom was strange to me. The toilette, sink and shower were not separated by a tub or anything. The shower was the shower head on the wall that you just spray yourself down in that room. Dont bring anything in that room that cant get wet in other words :).

Flower in the back yard. Found them beautiful.