The Mekong Delta
We had to get up early to go on our tour of the Mekong delta today. This meant waking up at 6.15, and having a shower. This was a novelty in itself, because for the first time since we'd arrived in Asia the guest house had cold and hot taps - so I could shave with hot water for the first time in 3 months. Normally, its cold only, and they have an electric water heater to give you a warm, but not very powerful shower. Its amazing that you get so used to losing the little comforts of home so easily, and almost don't notice getting them back every once in a while.
Anyway, by 7 o'clock we were on a bus, headed west to the delta. The drive, which took a couple of hours, wasn't very exciting - just a long line of lorries and motorbikes heading in and out of the city, and a straight road going past factories, rice paddies and coffee shacks. After leaving our bus at Cai Bai, we hopped in a boat and went to see some local 'factories'. Or at least, that was what the guide described them as.
It turned out that 'factory' was a description for a bamboo hut where things were still being manufactured in a traditional way - it seemed like something from the middle ages, with whole families involved in the production of rice paper, coconut sweets, puffed rice (like Rice Crispies) and rice sweets. Grandma and grandpa made the rice paper, steaming a thin layer of watery rice powder for 30 seconds until it formed into a sheet of paper, for making spring rolls. Then it was laid onto bamboo mats and put out into the sun to dry. This method of drying things is the same all over Asia, and because things are dried out in the open under the sun, they normally smell really bad and attract hordes of flies - especially the dried fish products. The sweets were being made by Dad, who mixed sugar and coconut milk to make a delicious paste, which thickened and eventually hardened into a toffee-like consistency. The sweets were then cut up by Mum, and wrapped by her and her daughter by hand. This was the bit that really surprised me - all those thousands of sweets, all wrapped precisely by hand. I had somehow imagined that automation would have crept into this job. The last 'factory' we visited was a back yard where 3 men worked over a searingly hot pan, popping rice, just like popcorn. They came out all fluffed up and white, and were then used to make sweet blocks, just like the Rice Krispy cereal bars.
Then it was back into the boat to cross to an island in the delta, for lunch and a wander around, before piling back into the boat for a visit to a brick factory. (This sounds like a typical 'Communist Country' tour agenda, but we'd found the morning interesting, as we got to see just how simple production is for many of the foods we'd been eating while we were here). There's obviously no phrase in Vietnamese for 'Health and Safety' as we wandered around the production floor, between kilns and raging fires, watching raw clay being turned into bricks and pots (pots which sell here for less than £2, and for £50 at home!).
Our final boat trip took us to the city of Vinh Long, back on the mainland, to visit the market, which was full of ladies in straw hats selling their fruit and vegetables. The hats are mostly worn by country women, or older generations - today's city women wear baseball hats, which is the standard for all the men in Vietnam. The Vietnamese women also seem to go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that they don't get sun on their faces - they want to keep their skin as light as possible - so they can be seen riding around town on mopeds, with hats, sunglasses, and two face masks - one on their forehead and one over their mouth. At first I thought the facemask was an anti-pollution thing, until I realised that they take them all of when they're out on their bikes in the evening. It's a funny old world - women from Europe working hard on their tans, women from Asia working hard on keeping their skin as light as possible.
We got back at 7pm in the evening, and the girls wore themselves out on a huge bouncy castle in a funfair on the walk back to the guest house, and we all went to bed, worn out by another hot and long Asian day.
Anyway, by 7 o'clock we were on a bus, headed west to the delta. The drive, which took a couple of hours, wasn't very exciting - just a long line of lorries and motorbikes heading in and out of the city, and a straight road going past factories, rice paddies and coffee shacks. After leaving our bus at Cai Bai, we hopped in a boat and went to see some local 'factories'. Or at least, that was what the guide described them as.
It turned out that 'factory' was a description for a bamboo hut where things were still being manufactured in a traditional way - it seemed like something from the middle ages, with whole families involved in the production of rice paper, coconut sweets, puffed rice (like Rice Crispies) and rice sweets. Grandma and grandpa made the rice paper, steaming a thin layer of watery rice powder for 30 seconds until it formed into a sheet of paper, for making spring rolls. Then it was laid onto bamboo mats and put out into the sun to dry. This method of drying things is the same all over Asia, and because things are dried out in the open under the sun, they normally smell really bad and attract hordes of flies - especially the dried fish products. The sweets were being made by Dad, who mixed sugar and coconut milk to make a delicious paste, which thickened and eventually hardened into a toffee-like consistency. The sweets were then cut up by Mum, and wrapped by her and her daughter by hand. This was the bit that really surprised me - all those thousands of sweets, all wrapped precisely by hand. I had somehow imagined that automation would have crept into this job. The last 'factory' we visited was a back yard where 3 men worked over a searingly hot pan, popping rice, just like popcorn. They came out all fluffed up and white, and were then used to make sweet blocks, just like the Rice Krispy cereal bars.Then it was back into the boat to cross to an island in the delta, for lunch and a wander around, before piling back into the boat for a visit to a brick factory. (This sounds like a typical 'Communist Country' tour agenda, but we'd found the morning interesting, as we got to see just how simple production is for many of the foods we'd been eating while we were here). There's obviously no phrase in Vietnamese for 'Health and Safety' as we wandered around the production floor, between kilns and raging fires, watching raw clay being turned into bricks and pots (pots which sell here for less than £2, and for £50 at home!).Our final boat trip took us to the city of Vinh Long, back on the mainland, to visit the market, which was full of ladies in straw hats selling their fruit and vegetables. The hats are mostly worn by country women, or older generations - today's city women wear baseball hats, which is the standard for all the men in Vietnam. The Vietnamese women also seem to go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that they don't get sun on their faces - they want to keep their skin as light as possible - so they can be seen riding around town on mopeds, with hats, sunglasses, and two face masks - one on their forehead and one over their mouth. At first I thought the facemask was an anti-pollution thing, until I realised that they take them all of when they're out on their bikes in the evening. It's a funny old world - women from Europe working hard on their tans, women from Asia working hard on keeping their skin as light as possible.We got back at 7pm in the evening, and the girls wore themselves out on a huge bouncy castle in a funfair on the walk back to the guest house, and we all went to bed, worn out by another hot and long Asian day.