The Mekong Delta

After several hours drive from Saigon, we started crossing more and more bridges. We had gotten to the huge delta of the Mekong, with hundreds of small branches and canals.  We moved from bus to boat, and started up one of the smaller branches.  The water was brown and silty, moving fairly fast.  Bright green river hyacinth bunches floated in clumps all along the sides, with some smaller clumps moving across the water in the center.  The banks were green with trees and bushes, and the banks were wet with mud.  This is a tidal delta, with the water rising up to 3 meters in the tide.  Everything seems to steam from all the moisture here.  The humidity is pretty intense.  

Small villages line the banks of the smaller river branches.  The houses are built on stilts and many have doors that open straight to the river, as people come and go mainly by boat.  Some of the larger villages have a paved path.  It's not really a road although possibly a car could drive it.  It's more for the motorbike and bicycle traffic.   We had the chance to bike ourselves through one of these little villages.  It was hot work and the path was narrow at points.  Some of the little bridges had some unexpected infrastructure issues, and there were some rather sharp stops and turns, and sudden chickens and dogs, and it was entirely unlike what we might call biking, but it was exhilarating!

Most of the houses are small, but there are a few larger older houses in the villages, built in the traditional style, with dark wood screen walls, a central open living space with a family alter on the back wall.  These photos are from the home of the family we stayed with, the Ut Trinhs, in the small village of Hoa Ninh, on a rather large island whose name translates as 'peaceable island.'

The gardens are filled with fruit trees--the local tiny bananas, pineapples, custard apples, coconuts, ugly fruits, watermelon, and many more.  We tried most of them and most were delicious!