Far East Update 13 - Mekong back to Ho Chi Minh City - Nov 2012

Friday Erev Shabbat

Good morning Vietnam

Today we checked out of our hotel in Can Tho and packed our luggage on the van and then headed for the river to board a longboat to travel down the Mekong River. Our van with the luggage would meet us down river after we had visited a number of sites.

Our first stop was the floating villages and the floating markets. There are many families that live on boats along the river. Most of them make their living by fishing thru open areas on their boat that are open to the river below. They lay down their nets and bring up the fish. it is mainly catfish and seafood.

As well, there are communities that line the river. Because the river is the main avenue of transport for the region, it is important to have access to the river. So most manufacturing is done on the river bank and then products are either picked up by boat or shipped by boat. We saw fruits, veggies, fish, sand, concrete, rice, etc being shipped by boat.

As you approach the markets, boats pull alongside and offer their wares. Each sales boat has a long bamboo pole extending upwards, that has tied to it, the item for sale today. So if you see a pole with a pineapple strapped to it, that is what that boat is selling. We saw some poles with multiple items strapped to them...that is what they were selling. It was very interesting and colourful.

We then turned down a canal and stopped at a rice noodle factory. We saw them the entire process...first they take thickened cooked rice and press it to remove the water. Then they put it on a giant crepe machine, steam it, remove the crepe like paper with a rattan rolling pin and place these on large bamboo racks to dry in the sun. One dry, they are fed thru a slitter that creates the thin rice noodles which are then packed in paper for shipping to local stores.

 From there we sailed down to a rice processing plant where they automatically separate the rice from the husks clean and polish it and then package the white jasmine rice in large 50 kg. bags for shipment to market.

We returned to the boat to go to the local fruit, veggie and fish market where we strolled thru and saw many fruits and veggies that were not familiar to us. Vinh stopped along the way to explain what each item was and how it was used.

We completed a very interesting morning, boarded our waiting van and headed back to Saigon, HCMC.

This fellow wins the award as the cyclist with the largest load that we saw in Vietnam

Arrived back in Saigon HCMC at 2 pm...went to the tailor's for the second fittings, arrived at the hotel at 3:15 pm ....Shabbat begins at 5:09 pm and we are rushing to get ready ....hope you all have a great Shabbat

All the best

Fran and David