Mekong River Cruise

**All photos can be clicked for larger size**

This past weekend we treated ourselves to a little river cruise. Originally we were supposed to move to Can Tho to teach English to seminarians for the school year. But, because that plan fell through, we decided to make a weekend trip to see the Mekong Delta region while it was still close at hand. We will be moving 8 hours north in the fall and visiting the "rice bowl of Vietnam" will become more inconvenient. The cruise we took ran from Cai Be, overnight, to Can Tho. On the journey we visited a small riverside village, the iconic floating market of Can Tho, and a rice noodle "factory". We had a lovely time and met some very interesting people along the way.

The cruise operator we used, Mekong Eyes, picked us and several other guest up in Saigon and drove us to Cai Be, where we boarded the boat. We left at 8:30 in the morning on Saturday. Most of the other guests were staying at centrally located hotels, so they were picked up form their accommodations, but we met the group at the Opera House. As we waited for our van we were chatted up by a friendly motorbike tour guide who claimed to have toured someone from the Obama administration around. He showed us pictures, but we had no idea who he was...

The ride from Saigon to Cai Be was about three hours, with a break at a rest stop, and the other guests were a Singaporean woman working for a Japanese management company and a couple from South Africa. The ride was pleasant, if bumpy, and we all did a fair bit of chatting once we had communicated to the driver that we would like the AC turned up. We arrived at Cai Be around 11:30 and were ferried out to our vessel. 

Our trip route (marked in yellow).

Once we had boarded, we dropped our stuff in our room and were given a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice (with sugar in it :/) and the chance to explore the boat until lunch time. Our vessel, the Mekong Eyes Classic, was built in the traditional style of a rice barge, but has two levels and is larger to accommodate 14 passenger cabins, a kitchen, dining room, and an observation deck with sun shades and lawn chairs. The rooms were cozy and well appointed making a nice blend of traditional and modern tastes.

Our Ship!

The sundeck on our ship.

The view from inside our room.

Lunch was served at 1pm and consisted of pumpkin-coconut soup, fried pork spring rolls, fried sea bass filets, rice, stir fried green beans, and a fruit parfait for dessert. We were seated at the end of a long table of guests, next to a lovely couple from New Zealand. They were in their sixties and the wife was nurse while the husband was a crayfish fisherman. We enjoyed talking to them about New Zealand, their daughter who works for a Christian aid organization in Scotland, and other places they had traveled. At one point in the 1970s they had rented a convertible Camero and driven across the US on route 66.

After lunch we had some more down time for cruising. Around 3pm we pulled up to a small riverside village for a walk and a visit. The dock was more of a ramp in the water, so we had to switch from our relatively larger boat to a smaller one to get ashore. It was essentially a long canoe powered by an outboard weed-wacker. We walked for about a mile through banana groves and between rice paddies until we reached a Cao Dai temple. (For more on the religion of Cao Dai see our previous post about our trip to their Holy See.) At this point it started to absolutely pour. We holed up in the temple for a while to let the rain pass and the tour guide gave some background on the religion of Cao Dai. Twenty minutes later we braved what had become a light drizzle to visit a local family.

A group of houses along the river (left), a small pagoda nestled along the river (center), another house along the river (right)

Traveling to shore in our small boat to visit a village.

Walking through the jungle to experience a local village (left, center), a bunch of bananas (right). 

A rice field with grave monuments. The deceased family members were buried in the rice fields where they worked as an omen of good luck for future rice crops.

The Cao Dai temple in the small village we visited.

It was about another mile through the mud and drizzle to get to the house of the family, where a lovely tea was spread for us. The family seemed like a pretty typical middle class house, although it wasn't exactly clear what their primary occupation was. They did have a pet king cobra, a pet viper, guava trees, and an adorable baby. The tea was the typical variety of weak green that is widely available. We also had rambutans, jackfruit, sweet potato chips, and rice crackers with sesame seeds. I enjoyed all of the snacks, and it was fun to watch the American children on the trip learn how to eat the rambutans. There were 5 tweenagers between the ages of 12 and 15 belonging to two 30-something American couples who were traveling together. I didn't get their full backstory, but one of the dads I talked to worked for the San Francisco fire department. The kids were a little rambunctious, and not always the most conscientious, but they were pretty good for a pack of tweens.

Rambutans (left), jackfruit (center), toasted rice chips (right).

After tea we trekked back to the boat to clean up before dinner. On the way back we made the acquaintance of a middle aged german couple from Freiberg. Their English wasn't great, so our conversation was short, but they were undoubtedly the best equipped passengers. They had fabulous, ankle length, hiking ponchos that they produced out of nowhere and their footwear was very well suited for the weather.

Back on the boat we all enjoyed a quick shower (hot!) and convened in the lounge (the only part of the boat with wifi) for a drink before dinner. We were given something pink in a martini glass called a "Mekong Martini". It came with a orange for relish and was some combination of fruit syrup, coconut milk, and vodka. Kim thought it was weird, but Chris has a thing for sweet drinks, so he liked it. Dinner was steamed giant prawns, which are a lot of work to eat, catfish fillets, sautéed eggplant, rice, BBQ ribs, and very small piece of chocolate cake for dessert. Over dinner we got to know another Kiwi. She was a widow in her early sixties and owned an avocado orchard. She also had rented a car in America to drive up the west coast in the 80s with her late husband. After our river cruise she was joining a three week biking tour up the coast of Vietnam in which she would cover approximately 50 miles a day.

Dinner, drinks, and discussion only ran until about 10pm. I think we all would have like to stay and talk much later, but breakfast was to start promptly at 6:45 in the morning! We slept well, and it was even a little chilly in our room!

The sun came defiantly through our windows at 5am and was accompanied by the sounds of the staff tromping back and forth over our heads to set up breakfast on the observation deck. We had planned to stay abed until 6:30, and we made it until 6, but the general commotion roused us for some early morning river watching. Once set up, breakfast was fruit, toast, mini muffins, tea, juice, omelets, and chicken noodle soup. One of those things is a traditional Vietnamese breakfast item, I'll let you guess which one ;p

By the time breakfast was over our ship had made it to the outskirts of Can Tho, and we transferred to a slightly smaller vessel to go up the river to the floating market. It took us almost an hour to wind our way past Can Tho's quickly developing waterfront to Cai Rang, the marketplace. Can Tho is the regional capital, and though floating markets are typical of the region, Cai Rang is the largest. Cai Rang is actually a wholesale market: upriver producers come with their barges full of every imaginable produce to gather in Can Tho. Smaller distributer boats dart about the barges buying produce they will then cary through the smaller waterways to local towns. Once the big boats run out of produce they make their way back up the Mekong. The market was slowing down by the time we reached it at 9am.  Most business is done in the cooler early morning hours. It was nice to have a calm atmosphere to wind through the boats and see their typical advertising method; a sample of the produce for sale is hoisted up a bamboo pole like a flag at the bow of the barge. Like many market places there is a secondary economy built upon the primary one. Little speed boats zipped between both the wholesalers and the distributers selling food, drinks, and other supplies necessary for life on a barge.

Two boats in the floating market. A 'convenient store' boat selling soft drinks, beer, and coconut water (left) and a whole sale boat selling goods (right). Notice the bamboo pole at the bow of the boat indicating availability.

From the floating market we wound our way deeper into the streams of Can Tho to visit a rice noodle "factory". Factory is a stronger word than it really necessary here, it's really more of a cottage industry. We witnessed as a family combined rice flour, tapioca flour, and water into a batter which they spread onto large canvas cloths to be steamed. The canvas was stretched tight over a round barrel, much like a drumhead and steam was pushed through the canvas to cook the rice. Once the crepe like disk had been steamed it was set on bamboo trays to dry in the sun. Two to three days later it is collected up and run through a slicing machine to make the Thai style stick noodles we can buy even in American grocery stores. I thought the process was interesting, if muggy work, but the South African man commented that the visit had put him off rice noodles on account of the outdoor work and the fact that many of the workers were shirtless.

Visiting the rice noodle 'factory'. Workers cooking noodle disks (left), another working placing the cooked disks on bamboo racks to dry (center), and the bamboo racks sitting in the open sunshine to dry (right).

A man separates the dried disks (left), our tour guide showing the dried rice paper prior to cutting into noodles (center), and the machine used to cut the paper into noodles (right)

The rice noodle house was our last stop and from there were were ferried back to Can Tho to meet our van back to Saigon. We were on the road by about 11 am, and stopped for lunch at a restaurant along the way. We made it back to downtown Saigon by 3:30 in the afternoon and took advantage of our location to grab a coffee and then go to a bar featuring craft brews. The bar was in the newer expat district located across the river, which is an entirely different world from the older parts of Saigon. The eastern part of the city has only started being developed in the last decade or so and it resembles any modern city with high rise apartments, wide, car-friendly roads, and boutique restaurants and shops. Its very clean, new, and shiny. It took us a bit to find the bar, BiaCraft, but it was worth it. They had local craft beers on tap, as well as bottled beers from America (Rouge, Blu Moon, Sam Adams, etc). We had a bacon wrapped hot dog and smothered cheese fries to complement our coconut porter and jasmine IPA. It was a great end to a great weekend, and I'm glad we splurged on the experience.

You made it to the end!

-Chris and Kim

Stay tuned for more tails from the other side of the world!

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