Tourists!

The scene when a bus arrives at it's destination in southeast asia. Those guys are all moto drivers looking for business. In Thailand they form a neat line, and take turns asking the passengers if they need a lift.

Today we went from CanTho, to My Tho (say Me Taw). We managed to get on a full size bus, thus reducing the chance of death if we were to get into a head on crash. We felt much safer today.

We really enjoyed the boat trip the other day in the delta, so since we're still here on the shores of the Mekong we thought we'd to another. We'd heard it was possible to see a fruit farm, a coconut candy factory, and wait for it...a honey farm. So naturally we were interested. After arriving here we learned that you had to arrange a tour from a "tourist office", (read "the government") and not just haggle a boat trip from one of the many people on the bank. It was illegal to just go on our own, and it's actually policed.

Bees working a coconut flower. These were a different species then what we work with in the commercial bee world. They were much smaller and didn't seem to sting...I tried to get them to.

So we obeyed the rules and booked a quick trip. Since we got here around lunch we didn't start our trip until about 2 pm, and had the boat to ourselves anyway...most people come to My Tho for the day from Ho Chi Minh, (which is about 75km from here), and get their "Mekong Delta experience". We were very disappointed with what we had gotten ourselves into. The bee farm, and fruit farm were both at one location, and it was little more then one beehive, and a few fruit trees. We got fed some tea with honey, and some fruit. The entire place was a government run tourist site with thousands of souvenirs. No attempt was made by anyone to teach us anything about "the farm", we figured it was because there actually was no farm. We then went to another island to see the "coconut candy workshop". Again it was just another pretend place where the coconut candies that the locals love and buy in the markets are not actually made.

Part of the trip on a channel through the island that the "farm" was on.

I realize this sounds like a ton of complaining, and it may actually be painful to read. It wasn't that we don't think there's a place for tacky tourism, because there is, and somtimes we like it. But this was a classic case of government control trying to pass something off to Western tourists as "authentic Vietnam" when really it wasn't Vietnam at all. It's not that we've ecome experts of Vietnamese curtal in the 3 days that we've been in the country, but from what we've seen so far in this country and the region, it was nothing like this. All the workers were wearing western clothes...which people in the working class not do. Everything was clean and neat...and not much in Vietnam is. And the people who showed us around were literally asking us for a "tip", which is not the culture at all. I'm not sure if this situation is something that the "non-backpacker" tourists actully want and have created for themselves, or if this is what the government thinks us westerns want. Either way, the thing that really got under our skin the most, was that we didn't have a choice in the matter. If this had been our only stop in the delta, we would have had no understanding at all of the way people actually live here. We learned nothing about how life is tied to, and completely dependent on the vast river system that is the Mekong Delta.

Dragon fruit!

But the day was redeemed! When we got off the boat, we walked towards the centre of town, and in less than 1/2km were into Vietnam again. We arrived at the market by chance, and had a wonderful time wondering the vastness of it. People were thrilled to see us, asked us for nothing, and were quick to share a smile with us and try their limited English. The people here have been great!

We did learn that the lovely small bananas that we've been eating throughout the region, grow much differently than the normal ones. That's a tall stack of ripening "lady finger" bananas. The flower is still on the bottom. And that's a bad picture of me.

Tomorrow we head to the juggernaught that is Ho Chi Minh, or as everyone still calls it, Saigon.