While we tend to shy away from organised tours and do our own thing (the last time we tried this, we got off the bus on a city tour at the second stop!), we have decided to take a day tour down to the Mekong Delta. This will give us an opportunity to see a little beyond the centre of Ho Chi Min City in the short time we are here.

Anne has chosen a more up market tour (smaller number of tourists), costing only AUD 75 each for the whole day. Our mini bus reflects this with business class type seats. As usual, I have no idea where we are going, Anne does the excellent organising in country, my job is the flights getting us there, but it will give us a glimpse of the countryside outside Ho Chi Min.

An early start at 07:30 and we are off. We are a group of 9, us from Australia and two parties from the Philippines. So luckily for me English is a common language so our guide can talk to all of us more easily.

An hour and a half later after passing many rice fields looking to being close to harvesting, we arrive in My Tho, a small town on the banks of the Mekong delta. After the narrow, broken and moped covered pavements/sidewalks we notice those in My Tho are wide, paved and moped free.

We arrive at the tourist ferry terminal. Here, a procession of small ferries whisk tour groups away across the one of the five arms of the Mekong Delta. The river’s colour is a muddy brown caused by all the sediment that washes down the river and provides the nutrients for each year’s crops. We join No. 11 which will be our boat for the day. Assuming the numbering of the boats is sequential then based on numbers we have seen 86 being the highest, there may be literally dozens and dozens of these boats out on the river. How crowded with tourists will the places we visit be?

Our first stop on Thoi Son island introduces us to locally made honey and royal jelly which tastes delicious and while happy to hold a swarm of docile bees on a frame, when later offered a very fat and rather shabby and well worn looking python to wear, we say “No Thanks”. Cannot be good for the snake to be handled that often by so many people. As we walk around the village, I realise that there are multiple paths that allow the tour guides to avoid each other which answers my previous question on crowding. The houses seem very plain, but we are told that, because of typhoons, some people are reluctant to spend money on something that may be destroyed.

Off again across the river passing large barges, waiting for the high tide to proceed further upriver our guide tells us. We arrive a Tan Thach and get shown how they produce coconut milk, well for tourists anyway. Saw an interesting technique for getting coconut out of the shell what looks easy but is probably quite hard.

Now us three men are offered snake wine, no not the same snake from our last stop, but a smaller and really dead one. I plan to decline, but the healing properties mentioned may assist in the recovery from prostate surgery, so here goes. Not going to become my favourite drink but we will see on the other matter.

Into the back of a tuk tuk type vehicle and we are whisked off to a copious lunch, but first we are going on a punt amongst the trees. Anne and I have our own punt and are gently propelled upstream amongst the bamboo and other green leafy trees hanging over the water.

Back to our No. 11 boat by motorised punt and we have had our fifth form of transport today. We return to the tourist ferry terminal at My Tho and then get to go to the Vĩnh Tràng Pagoda to see the three large Buddha statues. The Buddha statues tower over the pagoda complex which was built in the 1850’s. Inside the the temple, it is very peaceful with worshipers moving quietly from statue to statue bowing in front of each one paying their respects. One does not want to take photographs and we quietly leave the temple.

It is fascinating when we do a little research to try and understand what we have seen or gather the history for a site we have visited. Take Buddhism, I know little about the subject but just looking up information on the three Buddha statues, seated standing and lying down it seems that the position of the hands can have different meanings. I could keep reading but would never get this blog finished. Research in my childhood was much simpler. Find the encyclopaedia Britannica and copy the information out. The world wide web has made research more interesting, varied but time consuming to understand, collate and distill.

My limited research has led me to believe that the seated Buddha symbolises the Buddha’s enlightenment, as he attained enlightenment while sitting under the Bodhi tree , or the past. The standing Buddha indicates the Buddha’s readiness to assist all sentient beings – representing the present, and the reclining Buddha symbolises the Buddha’s final moments before passing away into Nirvana, the future.

On our return to Ho Chi Min City, we find a nearby vegetarian restaurant with an interesting history and excellent food. It was started by a couple who had made hundreds of meals a day at home for doctors and nurses during the COVID pandemic and the food was so well received that they were encouraged into the restaurant industry. Its a great story and even better food, so give it a go – Rau Oi Cuisine.

Tomorrow, we fly to Doha for three nights. We have enjoyed our stay in Ho Chi Min city even though we were taking it easy and saw a fraction of what the city has to offer.

– Anthony