Travelled 1.5 hours by car from Saigon (Ho Chi Minh) to board our little Sampan for 3 days and 2 nights. This is very luxurious by Vietnam standards - we have a lounge room, en suite bathroom with toilet, bedroom complete with mosquito net, and three staff plus a local guide who was a translator during the American War.
We are travelling along various waterways of the Mekong Delta, which are congested with water traffic of all sizes and shapes. Boats carry cargo of sand, rice husks, rice, fish, vegetables and fruits, bricks, etc, and usually have a wife and perhaps children aboard (school holidays at present). The noise from some of the motors is extremely loud.
On either side of the canals are houses and other buildings on stilts, and vegetation right up to the banks. This is the real Vietnam! We stopped to visit our guide's (tiny) home to meet his wife and daughter, visit a large pagoda, a coconut sweet factory, a brick factory, a floating market, and a temple. Rice husks are used to fire the bricks, and after burning, the ashes are returned to the farmers to use for fertiliser. Nothing is wasted in Vietnam!
It is unbelievably hot here (38 degrees today and 95% humidity) broken only by the occasional breeze as we cruise along, and an afternoon shower of rain.
Vietnamese food is extremely fresh, tasty and varied, even on the sampan. Some meals are brought aboard from shore, some cooked on board, and two dinners will be at restaurants onshore to which we are taken in a small boat.
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