Vietnam - The Mekong Delta

Since my sixteenth birthday almost thirty-five years ago, I’ve driven numerous cars, trucks, and vans, and in that time, I’ve honked those vehicles’ collective horns maybe twenty times.  The dude that drove the bus from Saigon to Can Tho honked the horn twenty times every thirty seconds, and by the time we arrived in the Mekong Delta, I emerged from the bus thinking, “Ima kill someone.” The Vietnamese honk their horns relentlessly, even more than the inhabitants of the Middle East, and I don’t know that I could ever get used to it.  At home, when someone honks at me for not accelerating a tenth of a second after a signal light has changed or for not turning right on red when I don’t feel like turning right on red dadgummit, I have fantasies of getting out of my car and bashing the windshields of the offending honkers with a crowbar.  The Lord is working on my heart in this area, but in the meantime, the horns of Vietnam have tested me, and thankfully I found refuge from them with my family on the banks of the mighty Mekong.

The day before we left Saigon, Deena and I did some recon work at the bus station while Joseph and Deveny worked on some school stuff, and we managed to purchase advance tickets for passage to Can Tho, one of the major delta cities.  Even though everything was in Vietnamese, we managed to communicate our desire to travel in a southwesterly direction, and the cashier was friendly and helpful as we completed our purchase.  Our last dinner in Saigon was a hearty bowl of beef noodle soup in a streetside cafe served up by a nice lady who was into her soap opera booming from a TV mounted on her food stand.  The Vietnamese are into these sappy programs big time, and they’re so poorly acted, it’s hard to tell if it’s comedy or drama, but I suppose the same could be said for the American soaps.  

We were up early the next day, and Joseph and I ran down the street to score some omelet banh mi for breakfast while the girls got ready, and after a flurry of packing activity, we boarded a taxi for the short ride to the bus station.  Earlier in this trip, we took a lot of buses across Europe, and we always managed to figure out the workings of the terminal and the platform from which our bus was leaving.  Not so in Vietnam as the only sign written in English in the entire station was for the bathroom, and while that was handy, it didn’t help us find our bus as we stood there bewildered with the clock ticking.  

Then out of nowhere, an elderly lady appeared, smiling as she shook our hands and told us in broken English that she had lived in Michigan for eighteen years and that she loved America.  She snatched our tickets and read them, then took Deena by the arm and led us around the bus station until we were seated in the correct waiting room fully educated on how to tell which bus was ours.  She even found a security guard and sternly assigned him to tell us when our bus was pulling into the boarding area.  She gave us hugs and blessed us, and we sat there with our grateful heads spinning.  After she left, a mother and daughter approached us and asked if we needed help, and they also made sure we knew how to read our tickets in order to find the right bus.  Three angel sightings in less than twenty minutes—a new record.

Other than the blaring horn, the bus was comfortable, and three and a half hours later, we pulled into the Can Tho bus station and boarded a taxi that whisked us off to the Nguyen Shack on the banks of the Mekong, just fifteen minutes away.  The Mekong Delta stretches over forty-thousand kilometers at the southwestern tip of Vietnam, and the river spreads out into a huge network of branches, streams, and swamps as it eventually washes into the South China Sea.  This area once belonged to Cambodia until it was annexed by a Vietnamese noble in 1698, and the attempt to reclaim it contributed to the downfall of the Khmer Rouge regime in 1978.  During the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong engaged US forces in heavy fighting during numerous battles made more difficult by the wet conditions.  Due to it’s warm wet climate, the delta produces three rice harvests a year making it one of the world’s top producers of this staple which has over fifteen-hundred varieties in Vietnam alone.  The Mekong Delta has an estimated population of seventeen million people of which eighty percent are involved with some aspect of rice production.

The Nguyen Shack is a unique homestay comprised of a main compound with rows of small dormitories and bungalows connected by a network of paths along the banks of the river.  The guest quarters are reached by crossing the river on a forty-meter long, swinging plank and cable footbridge. We were assigned bungalow number twelve at the end of the path—we felt that we had the river all to ourselves.  The bungalows are fashioned from bamboo slats affixed to exposed rafters and studs made from long, thin tree trunks whittled smooth.  The roofs are thatched with thick bunches of dry palm branches, and the floors are made of six-inch rough-sawn planking weathered gray with small gaps between the boards.  The small porch in front has views of vast green gardens lining multiple canals, and the rear porch is perched on stilts directly over the river with two reclining bamboo chairs and two coma-inducing hammocks placed next to the rails.  The bathroom is built just off the main area with a concrete floor and five-foot bamboo walls which allow a view of the jungle while showering.  The two double beds have large mesh nets tied to the ceiling and stretch to the floor, which offer protection from mosquitoes that are active only for a few hours at night.

On the front porch, those black socks are fixin' to come off

View from the front porch

On the afternoon of our arrival, there was a strong breeze sweeping across the bend in the river, and worn out from travel, we took long naps lulled to sleep by the leathery flap of the leaves in the banana trees surrounding our bungalow.  Later in the afternoon, we enjoyed soft drinks on the rear porch and watched the water level rise with the tide before walking back for dinner at the main compound.  The Nguyen Shack is staffed by an exceptional group of young men and women who have a strong command of the English language and complete understanding of warm, sincere customer service.  The compound was always lively with guests coming and going, steam pouring from the kitchen, and puppies romping around the perimeter.  As we sat down to eat, we watched a small pig run laps in the heavy ground cover of the courtyard between the building and the road stopping occasionally to munch on stalks of lavender flowers.  The food in the restaurant was reasonably priced, and we ate all our meals there during our stay and developed an affinity for the never-ending flow of refreshing lime juice served ice cold in tall clay mugs.

Bananas in the wild

Papaya mama

We arranged to join the bike tour the following morning and walked back across the swinging bridge to the footpath lined with papaya trees full of heavy fruit.  We enjoyed our first sunset in the delta from our rear porch and felt the breeze turn cooler with the onset of evening.  In our section of the Mekong Delta, the twilight air has a spicy scent like freshly sliced ginger, perhaps due to the many varieties of night-blooming flowers opening on vines in the trees and thick clumps of vegetation in the river.  In The Fellowship of the Ring, the hobbit, Samwise, makes the observation, “I thought I heard some soft plashing and a sniffing noise, a while back; but you hear a lot of such queer sounds by a river at night.”  I agreed with Sam as the night came alive with all sorts of sounds from the river and its banks, and we experienced the first onslaught of mosquitos that had us running for the protection of the nets on the beds.  We spent the rest of the evening watching art appreciation videos while the yellow moon rose over the Mekong, and we forgot all about the busy city from which we had just traveled.

Sunset on the back porch

After a hearty breakfast of eggs and French bread, we joined a young couple from New Zealand and struck out on the bike tour guided by Peter and Hui, two delightful young men who were excited to show us the countryside and life along the river.  The sun was bright, and the banana tree leaves were still dripping with moisture from the night before as we biked along in the warm and humid air already receiving waves and smiles from the villagers we passed.  We kept a slow pace, which was fine with us since we hadn’t ridden bikes since October in Italy. We made frequent stops beginning with the nearby elementary school where we could hear the children enthusiastically reciting their lessons in unison while Peter told us about education in Vietnam.  

The current situation among natives, especially in the countryside, is that only the rich can afford a good education at a university; so one must learn English early in order to land a higher paying job to finance higher learning.  Peter said that the poor people in the delta live together in big families and work the rice fields to survive and work at odd jobs between harvests to make extra money.  We paid a visit to the village blacksmith, who farms during the seasons and during his short breaks, makes razor-sharp machetes and curved knives for the other villagers to assist them during the harvests.  We left the smoky tang of the blacksmith’s shop and biked down the road a short distance to the local distillery where the owner produces government sanctioned one-hundred-proof rice wine that packs a real wallop.  His still is set up much like one run by a moonshiner in the mountains of North Carolina, and by law, he can sell his rice squeezin’s only to the local population of men since drinking and smoking women are frowned upon in Vietnamese society.  The distiller also raises pigs for the benefit of the community, and these little porkers were eager to greet their western visitors.

Blacksmith

The still

Village street

The Buddhist pagoda, the longest stop of the morning where we were served vegetable soup with noodles and and played with Tee Tee, a beautiful little girl who is one of the orphans living there under the care of the monks and nuns.  It is common for Vietnamese women who have children outside of marriage to leave their newborn babies at a monastery in order to avoid rejection by their families.  The monks and nuns care for the children until they reach the age of eighteen, when they are given the choice between going out into society or becoming a monk or nun, and the majority of them choose service to the temple.  We learned that in many cases, the orphans are adopted by families in other countries, and a family from Serbia is hoping to adopt Tee Tee in the near future.  She gave us all kisses as we bid farewell to the monks and thanked them for their kindness.

Pagoda shrine

Deveny and Tee Tee

Joseph and Tee Tee

During the last hour of the tour, we stopped at a rice factory, a traditional doctor’s office, and a pottery maker’s shop where we learned all about the particulars of these trades and how they are woven deeply into the workings of the community along the river.  As Peter and Hui talked about modern life in the village, I was reminded of tales of life in rural America before the industrial boom when families survived hard times with the support of the local community. After four hours biking in the heat of the morning, we were all tired and sweaty and ready to head back to the Nguyen Shack; so we left the riverside and rode back down the main highway—a little hairy at times, but this route took us to mugs of ice cold lime juice in the quickest fashion.  In the courtyard there sat an old skiff repurposed as a home for a large school of garra rufa fish, also known as doctor fish, that provided free fish pedicures for the Shack guests.  The little fish swarm around the feet and nibble off dead skin leaving one’s tootsies feeling fresh and soft provided one can stand the procedure.  We witnessed this spectacle in Thailand as grown men screamed like little girls while their wives forced them to keep their ticklish feet in the tank until they could snap a Facebook-worthy picture.  We all managed to to try it, and I ended up liking it so much that I went back several more times during our stay.

Rice factory

The doctor's herb supply

Fish pedicure

We spent the afternoon after our bike ride on the rear porch of our bungalow reading and dozing until the shadows grew long and the tide pushed the level of the river high up the bank.  The sun looked like a distended glob of molten orange glass as it dripped slowly out of the clouds into the jungle, and we were treated to a spectacular sunset unlike any we had witnessed since our time on Santorini.  At the compound, we had a delicious dinner of fried spring rolls and pork with vegetables before walking the papaya-lined path back to our bungalow where we were much better prepared for the mosquitoes and enjoyed a longer evening on the porch watching the moon and stars gather intensity in a dark purple sky.

We signed Joseph and Deveny up for a cooking class on our last day on the banks of the Mekong, and they did a great job preparing several dishes under the cheerful tutelage of one of the resident chefs.  Deena took notes on the recipes as they sliced, diced, and sauteed, and I sat nearby and drank lime juice and edited pictures until the dishes were cooked to full flavor and served as our luncheon.  After more afternoon porch time, we boarded a skiff with several other guests and pushed off the dock into the depths of the Mekong for the sunset river tour.  The boat was captained by a small man whose skin looked like dark brown leather from years spent in the sun. We maneuvered against the current by the power of a Honda pressure-washer engine turning a small propeller at the end of a two-meter shaft—the Vietnamese version of the outboard motor.  

Cooking class

We spent two hours exploring branches of the main river passing small houses, boat docks, and large, half-sunken vessels slowly filling with red river sand.  We received many friendly waves from local moms and dads giving their kids an evening bath in the river attesting to the fact that most houses had no running water, but glancing through screened doors, we did witness the glare of a few flat screen TVs mounted on cinder block walls.  The sun set just as we returned to the Nguyen Shack and had another delicious supper before taking one last night walk back to the bungalow, where our well-practiced mosquito procedures left us bite-free for the evening.

I got up early on our last morning and spent some time by myself on the rear porch and reflected on our restful time on the river while I listened to the wind swish through the bamboo leaves and rustle the dry palm branches.  As I drank my coffee, I was treated to the sight of two older women piloting a small skiff through the vegetation floating along the bank.  I watched in surprise as the lady in the rear of the boat gave a sudden strong burst with the oars sending the front of the boat sliding up the bank as the lady in the front grabbed onto the thick stalk of a banana tree.  She pulled a wicked curved knife from the front of her shirt and sliced the purple, football-sized flower from the end of a stalk of bananas and chucked it into a pile of harvested flowers on the floor of the boat.  She pushed off from the bank, and they waved and gave me toothless grins as they headed downstream in search of more flowers.

As the rest of the crew got up, we silently showered and packed our things knowing that we had to leave this special place.  There was a four-hour bus ride ahead of us since we planned to spend our last two days in the city of Chau Doc before crossing the border into Cambodia.  It’s hard to believe that we’ve spent a month in this amazing country, and the time has flown by for all of us.  We walked over the bamboo bridge from our bungalow to the path and enjoyed the stroll along the lush canal one last time. We finished a quick breakfast just as our taxi pulled up to take us back to the bus station.  We said our goodbyes to the wonderful staff and left the Nguyen Shack rested, refreshed, and flush with the knowledge that the majority of the earth’s beauty is contained along the banks of rivers and streams all over the world, especially those of the Mekong Delta in southwest Vietnam.