Sightseeing in Vietnam: The Mekong Delta

Our last day in Vietnam me and Adaora went on another day trip, this time to the Mekong Delta a little bit south of the capital Ho Chi Minh. The Delta Adventure Tours picked us up at our hotel at 7:45 in the morning, and our next adventure had began.

 After a 3 hours long bus trip our first stop was My Tho, where we changed to a local motor boat and headed for the smaller islands.

The harbor of My Tho

Picture taken inside the river boat, just as the guide is talking about the places we were going to visit.

 Our first stop was the so-called Unicorn Island where we got to try some locally produced honey wine. Here you can see our guide along with some of the bees that produces the honey here.

But they did not only have bees to show of at the small honey farm. They also sold some alcoholic beverages with other local specialities (?!) inside as well.

 And they also had an available pet-snake that some of us were lucky enough to hold for a while. With that said, Adaora asked me to state in the blog that she kept a good distance from the snake.

 They did not only have a big pet-snake, but they also had some dead ones they used to make yet another kind of funny drink for the tourists. Of course I could not resist the temptation to try out one shot of it, and to be honest it did not taste that much.

 I did not think much more about it, I mean, snakes are kind of creepy but it is not really that bad. We even had snake-soup while in Taiwan.. It was not until our guide revealed that there was another animal inside the bottle - a dead crow - that I started to feel it in my stomach. On the upper left side of the bottle you can actually see the beak of the bird. YUK!

Besides other tourists and some locals, the only thing to see is the nature.

 After a short boat trip to another island, our next thing to try out was a trip with a a local rowing boat.

 On the small river going through the delta. Although this seems to be mainly based on tourists it is a fun experience with nice and quiet surroundings and locals passing by us in their boats probably on their way to pick up new tourists (and some of them keep on asking for money as they pass you.)

Back on open water again

Me and Adaora at one of the islands where they are making coconut-candy. Thanks to our new friends from the Philippines who took the photo:)!

 Not to mention that we had another short delta trip, this time by a bigger motor boat.
Then it was time for lunch. The lunch was so-so, but they had a menu there too so for those who wants more food it was possible to order more.
After lunch there was only a few things to do left on the program, and none of them was too impressive to be honest. First we got the opportunity to take a bicycle  trip around the island we had lunch. But the bicycles were in such a bad condition that some of them was nearly impossible to use. Most of them did not have brakes and so on.. :p
After that the last thing on the program was to hear some locals sing and play on some interesting Vietnamese instruments. It was alright, though the best thing about it was that we got served fruit while listening! Haha:)

 In older days people used to be afraid of crocodiles in the river, and for this reason they painted eyes on the front of their boats to scare the crocodiles and thereby avoid being attacked by them.

The trip was really fun at start, but both me and Adaora felt that it kind of dabbed off after the lunch. The price of the tour was 210.000 Vietnamese Dongs pr. person, so at least it was cheap and we did have some interesting experiences too, so I still would not hesitate to recommend this trip to others.

All posts about Vietnam

About Anette
Anette came to Japan as an exchange student in 2010, met the love of her life and got stuck. From her base in Tokyo she writes about her experiences as a full-time worker in Tokyo and about her travels in Japan and abroad. She's a free-spirited adventurer who enjoys both the great outdoors and her urban lifestyle.