The Indochina Adventure Part 2: Aboard the Sampan Boat

Day 3

We hopped on a bus for a four hour ride to the village where we would board our sampan boat to travel the Mekong Delta.  We were met by our "staff," meaning the 4 darling Vietnamese men who would be traveling with us for the next few days!  The only one that spoke English was our main guide, Phi, who was an old man who fought in the war.  He was the cutest little old man I've ever met.

 Laura, Reed, Phi, and Katie

We began the adventure with a walk through the local village.  Every single child we passed shouted "HELLO!" to us and it was absolutely adorable.  We were also invited in for tea by two different families along the way, but we politely declined.  The people there were just so hospitable, it was unbelievable!

Then it was aboard the sampan boat. Our view for the next three days:

We were taken down the river a ways until we came to a place where they make rice paper.  This woman showed us how she does it:

 I thought Ho Chi Minh was hot, but at least there you could duck into an air conditioned building or a place with fans every once in a while, whereas the sampan boat offered no refuge from the burning heat and humidity.  I felt sticky the entire time we were aboard.  

In other news, on that first day I tried a new fruit! I couldn't tell you what it was called, but here is a picture of it:

We visited one of the local markets, where Katie and I each purchase a rug for 30.000 dong, the equivalent of $1.50 in USD.

The women were more than happy to pose with their goods as long as I showed them the picture after I took it. They were the sweetest!

We cruised out on the front of the boat for the sunset, which was absolutely stunning.

Meanwhile, this room:

was suddenly transformed into a room like this:

Our staff is a bunch of sneaky demons! We could not figure out where in the world they pulled an entire mattress from!  They gave us a fan and we prepared for our first night aboard the sampan boat in the heat.  It was the first time I had ever slept under a mosquito net!

Day 4

We awoke to the sampan boat being largely tilted to one side.  We discovered that when the tide had gone out we had been grounded! Luckily, I went back to sleep and when I woke again, we were back in the water.  After a lovely breakfast prepared by the crew, we headed to the Cai Be Market, one of the largest and most authentic markets in Vietnam.  There was tons of fruit and fish, accompanied by more interesting smells.

The market was FULL of seafood. Most of it, as pictured below, was still alive!

Just what is that in the bottom right corner of the above picture you might ask?

Here's a closer look:

If you still can't figure it out, those are RATS. Gnarly.

 The infamous reeking jack fruit! Beware!

More adorable children on motorcycles... 

After perusing the market, we hopped on bicycles and took a tour around the city.  The city where we stopped was famous in the area for its nurseries, so we visited several flower gardens. I'm not sure what exactly happened with my camera during the bike tour because I have zero pictures of it, but it was our first time out in the Vietnam traffic in something smaller than our giant tour van!  It was pretty scary with people whizzing past you on motorcycles and honking every 5 seconds just to let you know they are behind you, but it was a cool experience.  We even saw our first traffic collision! Luckily it was just a small one.  A woman was carrying two HUGE bags on either side of her motorcycle, and she got too close to another woman on a motorcycle and the bags knocked the other woman's bike over!  Everyone was perfectly fine though so no worries!

After the bike ride, we got back on the sampan boat, where we discovered our new favorite treat...cold towels.

Then it was back to cruising the river.

 We saw a lot of rickety bridges going over the river. This one was just barely wide enough for a motorcycle to make it across.

And then, there were the cutest kids I've ever seen. They were everywhere we looked!

We passed by tons of houses along the river. To the people who live there, the river is life.

We eventually came to a place where we stopped to see the rice paddies.  The woman who owned the home where we stopped was so kind and invited us in for tea! She then proceeded to show us her huge flat screen TV and bragged about her daughter weighing 30 kilos.  Meanwhile, Phi was translating all of this for us.  I couldn't help but laugh when she told us her daughter's weight... the girl was HUGE! So chubby and adorable. Here she is:

She was so cute and I kept trying to get her to play but she just thought I was weird. I loved all the kids there, they were the CUTEST!

While we were paddling down the tributary, we saw a ton of ducks, which of course reminded us of the movie The Notebook. Naturally, we snapped some "Notebook" pics. This was my favorite of Katie:

 The rice paddies were absolutely GORGEOUS. 

Later that night, we stopped at a local woman's house for dinner.  The woman was adorable. Our guide told us all about how she was in her 40s and single because she had never found love. She had had many men fall in love with her, but she wasn't feeling it ever so she lived alone.  She showed us around the gardens surrounding her home and stopped to point out every single jasmine tree in her yard.  She would pull out a ton of the flowers and give them to us until we couldn't hold anymore and all the jasmine trees in her entire property were stripped of the flowers.  They did smell pretty good though! On top of that, she gave us about 5 other flowers, so in an effort to free up our hands without being rude, we put them in our hair. I thought she was going to die from excitement! She just kept saying "Ohhh! So beautiful!"

Meanwhile, we had been out in the heat and humidity all day and pretty much looked terrible, so we didn't believe her for even a second.

There she is, smiling in the background of the picture of Katie with 16 flowers piled in her hair. She was the funniest lady.

Day 5

Our sampan adventure came to a close, but not before we got to cruise one of the floating markets.  These markets are designed for people who live on the river to come get fruits, vegetables, bread, or other goods.  Each boat anchors and puts a long pole at the front of their boat with whatever they are selling stuck to the top of it.  That way, shoppers can easily find a boat with the thing they need.

After the floating market, we docked the sampan boat, said thanks and good bye to our crew, and boarded our van to travel back to Ho Chi Minh airport for our flight to Danang.

To be continued...