Jarrod and Sara’s Site

One of the highlights of southern Vietnam and our last stop, was the city of Can Tho. Located in the heart of the Mekong Delta, it is famous for fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh fish and prawns, and river living. We arrived here and took a tour of the river in our own small boat with our driver Loung, a really nice and funny lady.

She picked us up at 5:30am so we could catch the sunrise while heading to the floating market. It was really peaceful on the river and Jarrod and I were both surprised at how many people were already up and working at this early time of day. Most had already completed their daily walking and aerobic exercises before starting the working part of the day.

I was surprised at how busy the market was! There were boats everywhere, bumping into each other, and people using their feet and other body parts to either push off or stay connected during sales. There were also people climbing over a few boats to get to the one they wanted and one man even jumped into the water to swim to his desired boat for a sale. For sale there were mostly fruits and vegetables, flowers for the upcoming Tet Festival (Chinese New Year), some meat, and even some food vendors selling drinks, soup, and quick stir fries. It was really bustling, colorful, loud, and awesome.

After the market Loung took us through the smaller canals where we looked around at river life passing by the boat. There were people washing clothes in the river, taking baths, cooking dinner, minding children, and fishing. Loung pointed out the many different kinds of fruit trees to us including mango, papaya, jackfruit, starfruit, lychee, coconut, river cocoa, banana, and pomelo (to name a few). She stopped at a friend’s house to show us how they make rice noodles. This was really interesting since we have been eating them for a while now. They first boil down rice to a fine liquid, cook it on something like a big round skillet into a really thin pancake, lift it off of the skillet with this cool cylindrical bamboo thing, and then let them dry in the sun for a few hours before putting them in the slicing machine. We had a new appreciation for our new favorite Pho noodle soup after seeing this long process.

We liked the houses along the river in the small canals. They were built up on stilts to accomodate for the higher water levels during the rainy season. It was really sad though to see all of the poverty here. Some of the houses were simple shacks made from whatever materials available; wood, tin, tarps, or concrete. They had sloping floors and I noticed one that had a door that wouldn’t close because the floor was so slanted. Many looked as though they would slide into the water if a strong wind came through. It was strange to see such a conflict between the beautiful natural landscape, and the extreme pollution in the river and canals where sewers, and it seemed, people’s daily garbage, was dumped directly into the river. Despite this, however, every single one of the children we passed was waving and yelling an enthusiastic hello and people seemed to be enjoying their lives in this peaceful area.

Now, we’re off to Cambodia. Hope you’re all doing great, we miss you.

Sara and Jarrod