Rah Rah Delta, Mekong Delta

The second and third day involved my trip to the Mekong Delta. The whole time I was there I thought about all my Delt brothers at home because you can't say Mekong Delta without saying Delt.

We left early in the morning and withstood a very long bus ride out to the river. The bus was crazy, hitting bumps really really hard. We sat up in the back, where the seats are sort of elevated, and we went flying with every pothole or little bump.

We arrived around 11 30 at the river. We got into two long wooden boats and they gave us a tour of the river. There were little houses all along the banks of the murky brown water. In some areas it looked like someone took a piece of a township from South Africa, lifted it up on wooden stilts and stuck it on the banks of the Mekong in Vietnam.

This river was just covered with these boats. People live on them as well as use them for business. The hulls had windows, the bows had hammocks, and every one of them had eyes painted on the very front. This was to scare alligators away, and it must have worked because I didn't see a single alligator on the whole trip.

We spent a few hours getting a feel for the lifestyle and then moved to go back on the bus but it had a flat so we had to wait. Our next stop was our hotel, which was in a city called Can Tho. We had to get off the bus to board a ferry to take us across the river because they were building a bridge. This ferry was large enough to fit charter buses, all the people on motorcycles, as well as pedestrians. In the waiting room, we were the first ones there but pretty soon it was filled with motorcycles. And when the gate opened the motorcycle people just went, not caring about us. It was quite scary.

At our hotel Isaiah and I took naps. Then it was dinner which was SO GOOD! I ate all kinds of meats and noodles and seafoods and everything. Yeah, mom, I ate shrimp. Maybe now you'll take me to Todai.

The next day we hit the floating market. I bought a ton of mini-bananas for a dollar, popping them off one at a time, unpeeling them, and throwing the peel into the river. Which is allowed.

After the floating market we went back to the rooftop of our hotel for lunch, where they served this ground squid/beef fried combo that nobody except Isaiah and I liked, so we had a ton of those.

Our bus ride back was a few hours, and that night we went out and got our suits fitted and ate some Pho. The Pho was excellent, I wish I would have had some more Pho before we left.