Vietnam: Cần Thơ, Mekong Delta

Cần Thơ

The trip from Ho Chi Minh City to Can Tho
is a 2 hour drive.

Can Tho is the fourth largest city in Vietnam, and the largest in the Mekong Delta.. boasting a population of 1.2 million.

It is part of the Mekong Delta, which is southwest part of Vietnam that is considered the "rice basket" of the region, contributing to half the nation's rice supply. The Mekong river and its subsidaries empty into the ocean through this land. Its considered a "biological treasure trove" with a large diversity of species and plant life. -Wk

The Mekong Delta

There are a lot of tourist attractions and the markets offer lots of fresh fruits including Pomelo and Durian (hmm.. not a huge fan of this smelly fruit to be honest).

Here are some of my photographs from the two day tour:

Can Tho Riverside

Can Tho Floating Market 

Children of the Mekong River who are part of the floating market are part of families that live on the boats. Many of these children often don't go to school and grow up illiterate. "Its a challenge for the Vietnamese government to address."

A motorized and non-motorized boat for transportation. This lady was going to the floating market to purchase produce

 To indicate what they're selling, vendors tie the fruit to a pole out front:

Honey in Vietnam

The first stop as part of the tour was visiting a place that made food and products from honey. We lifted this honey comb and I thought I'd see a lot of them fly around, but they were completely docile. No buzzing either! I think we were relatively safe as long as we didn't drop the honey comb :P

Dad with the honey comb!

Close up of the worker bees. 

Rice Noodle Factory

The rice husks are used as tinder to heat the cooking process for rice noodle. A mixture of ground rice flour is poured on top of a thin sheet and heated. 

Within a few minutes its ready to be picked up where they are dried in the sun for 2 hours, then shredded through a machine and folded:

Coconut Candy Making

Coconut is impaled to get to the coconut flesh. The coconut "meat" used to be scraped out by hand, but now a machine is used to remove all necessary parts. 

The coconut is "ground" to remove the juice, which is then mixed with other ingredients to make a "toffee" like candy. 

The mixture is poured into thin columns, which are then cut, packaged and sorted.

Vietnamese Alcohol

I tried some rice wine (40%) but turned down the 60% rice wine.  They also had snake wine (which they sold with a full snake and scorpion inside)

Can Tho Night Markets

It was a great two day tour. My dad and I had some good bonding time and I got to see a side of Vietnam I hadn't seen before.

 

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