Me Kong Delta

We went on a short tour of the Me Kong Delta. Most of the tour took place on the river and tributaries themselves, although it did feel like we spent a long time on the bus as well.

There are houses on the river where people live and raise fish. These houses float above a cage where the fish are kept, and can be fed from above.



The tour took place on progressively smaller and smaller boats. Here's us on the first boat...


One of the first stops we made was a place where they make coconut candy. They boil the coconut milk down to a taffy, then press it into this mold. The woman in the back is cutting the strips into squares and wrapping them in two types of paper--the inside one is edible, which took a while to get used to.



This is the size of the smallest boats we were on--just big enough for 4 people. We got onto smaller and smaller boats because the tributaries were also getting smaller and smaller and the bigger boats would have hit bottom.



Paddling through the tributaries....



A lot of the boats here (even the big fishing boats) have eyes painted on the front. It's to scare away the big fish that might knock over the boat and also the big fish that eat the smaller fish that they are trying to catch. The eyes are supposed to make the boat look like an even bigger fish.