Ho Chi Minh City - Day 4 (28 Aug '10) Part 1

Day 4

We had a 2 + hour drive to another town known as My Tho. The road to My Tho is many times better than the road to Vung Tau. It is wider and not as bumpy. Click here for more info of My Tho.

The main reasons of visiting this town was to ride on a boat along Mekong River, visit the orchards, villages and handicraft workshop. Then, we had an adventurous sampan ride along a very narrow creek. YX enjoyed that the most !

Along the journey to My Tho, we saw picturesque rice fields and something caught our attention. It was the tomb stones / graves of the dead being planted in the middle of the rice field / farm. Our guide told us that those are freehold lands and the people here (especially the old ones) wish to live and die on their very own land.

We rode on this bigger boat along the Mekong River to get across to the orchards and handicraft workshop.

YX did not hesitate to try on the hammock when he saw one. There are a lots of hammocks in Vietnam and you can see them especially at more remote places, tying onto trees.

While having some honey + lime at the bee farm, this boy suddenly brought out a huge python for photo shot at no cost. Dad was the only brave one to carry the python and had his picture taken with our own camera.

Visiting the coconut candies factory. All were handmade.

Next, we had some local fruits. Whatever was served, we had it here in Malaysia. While back in our country, most of us eat fruits with plum powder. Over there, the Vietnamese eat fruits with salt + shrimp powder. (The small plate in the middle is salt + shrimp powder). Don't really like it.

While enjoying our fruits, a group of Vietnamese singers sang some local and Chinese songs to entertained us. We just gave them some tippings.

After the fruits, we had the sampan ride. YX was so happy and kept on singing 'Row Row Row your Boat' while gong gong helped him to row the boat with a stick we found inside the sampan. Gong gong used the stick with the permission of the boat man of course. The sampan went through a very narrow palm shading creeks before coming to a bigger opening of the river mouth where we migrated to the bigger boat which we rode earlier.

Upon approaching to the bigger boat, it started to rain heavily. Phew ! We managed to get into the bigger boat on time! Inside the boat, we were being served with fresh coconut juice.

Coming up next is the famous Elephant's Ear fish and Dragon's Egg for lunch ..........