Vietnam: Saigon along the Mekong Delta

 Finally we reached Saigon. I suppose that the politically correct name would be Ho Chi Minh City but Saigon does have a romantic feel to it and yes I've seen Miss Saigon the musical so there was a kind of tragic nostalgia that a newcomer (like myself) would associate with the city. HCM is busy, busier than Hanoi and if we thought road crossing in Hanoi was crazy, one has to embrace death to navigate the traffic in HCM. There were a few times when I did think that I was going to get down by the numerous cars. We arrived in the evening and it was unfortunate that our room was situated at the top level and the lift only went to the level below it, so Iz and I had to lug all our luggage up a flight of stairs. Not very good considering that we had extra levels of luggage after our shopping in Hoi An :) Like any new city we came to, Iz and I went for a short walk around the city and ended up having a drink at the roof top bar of the Majestic Hotel. Supposedly it's a very old hotel which was noted in Iz's guidebook but when we went back to ask Lap about it, he was quite nonchalant about it. I guess he didn't think it was that significant... A nice visit nontheless.

The next day was a trip to the Mekong Delta and our homestay for the night. The delta is so vast and it was amazing while sitting in the middle sized motorized boat and watching all the activity on the delta. The Mekong is also known as the fruit bowl since many fruit types are grown here and there is fruitful harvests all year round. We went to a fruit plantation and I was amazed at the bounty of fruits that they offered - mangoes, jackfruit, chiku, jumbo, cacao plant... I definitely had a whale of a time chugging the jackfruit down. Better for me that no one else seemed to like them :)

We had a coconut treat on the boat. I think that most people loved the coconut water but not many liked eating the coconut flesh.

A paranoma picture I took using an app on my iphone - pretty cool isn't it!

One of the highlights of the delta - having a sanpan trip through one of the smaller rivers where groves of coconut trees flanked the river on both sides.

Visit to the coconut factory where we saw how they made coconut candy. They sell it in many flavours - pandan, ginger, chocolate, peanut, durian. I bought the pandan, ginger and chocolate flavours back to my office for my colleagues to try. They were quite a hit!

On a truck ride on the way to our homestay. On our way there, we made a detour to the rice fields. Mekong's weather and fertile ground allows it to have up to 3 rice harvests a year. This is different from Sapa which only has 1 rice harvest a year.

Ghost house. Locals don't dare inhabit this place as it used to be a prison/torture place for the French.

At our homestay... the liquor of this region is banana wine which many of us had many shots of that night. Plus D still had that bottle of Vodhka that he had kept from Hue and with the cheer viet beers, it was a night of singing, drinking and card playing - this is how we entertained ourselves at the homestay.