Mathew

Travelling round the Mekong Delta is quite an experience; leaving Ho Chi Min (Saigon, it's the same city really) we boarded a bus for the delta, it took several hours to reach the delta once we arrived we boarded a boat and began the tour seeing the floating markets and how life in the delta is lived. I have to say its almost like being on the inside of a fish bowl, if only for a few days because you are almost peering into someone’s life. I mean how would you like it if a bunch of tourists with big cameras came to your kitchen window while you were making dinner and were like ‘Just act normal and continue with your life while we snap picture after picture’. I mean I don't feel bad about the whole thing but still.

The following day we took the bus to another part of the Delta and then a boat to a factory that makes coconut fudge. Basically to make coconut fudge you take a coconut that's a year old, and scoop out the actual coconut flesh where you heat it and stir it continuously for several hours until it changes consistency and becomes fudge like. Credit where credit is due, a year old coconut stirred and heated is actually quite nice and I would recommend to anyone who’s not had coconut fudge that you need to try some. Another exciting cooking related tour we participated in was ‘popped rice’ which is basically raw un-husked rice, which is heated in a wok with sand in side to help dissipate the heat evenly. The result is a product similar to popcorn except its kinda long as you would expect from rice… They then mix this with either sugar or honey and nuts and make a sort of popped rice brittle thing, very tasty and great for tiding you over when your on what seems to be and endless bus journey.

Our final day in the delta was spent touring a rice-milling factory, which I suppose you could say was interesting, basically you just saw a big dusty machine making lots of noise and two bags at the bottom being filled, one with high quality rice and the other one with all the rice ends and lesser quality stuff.

After watching such an interesting machine work, we were dropped off in the local town and went exploring, along the travels we found a very large silver-ish statue of Ho Chi Min himself (a very important man to the Vietnamese).

Travelling back to Ho Chi Min city was fairly uneventful (well what did you expect from a bus journey?) and we arrived mid afternoon. Checking back into the hotel that Siobhan’s dad ever sooooooooo graciously paid for (thank you), we proceeded to spend the afternoon relaxing and went to have a leisurely afternoon of coffee shops and we went to pick up an outfit Siobhan had made which was a beautiful over coat made from silk. I suppose it could be called an overcoat (as I have actually forgotten the proper name of what you call it, we will stick with delectate overcoat). Now this delectate overcoat is made of red and black silk and has very long sides and back.

After our shopping fun Siobhan and I were treated to 90 minutes of heaven in the form of a very beautiful very small Vietnamese girl / woman (dependant on the ID you looked at) who provided us with a very nice and a lot more pleasurable foot and body massage. Client / masseuse confidentiality forbids me from going into details but suffice to say, I would have been happy to sit thought another 90 minutes of that any day of the week.

Leaving Ho Chi Min city we have not travelled north to a town called DaLat, which is in the highlands of South Vietnam. The last few days we spent exploring the ‘very small town’ and today was a very exciting day where we went abseiling (Repelling) down several ravens and even into some waterfalls, which despite being incredibly slippery was great fun. We traversed 20-metre walls, 18-meter walls and a 25-meter waterfall. Pictures will follow in the next few days once I get the camera sorted out.