The Mekong Delta

The last stretch of our north-south Vietnamese journey brought us to Ho Chi Minh City and a day trip to the Mekong Delta, specifically to My Tho in the district of Ben Tre.  This is a lush tropical area with acres upon acres of banana and coconut plantations and of course abundant fisheries in the river delta. We had a great day cruising up the river on a small boat - an eye-opening experience watching the commercial transportation up and down stream, visiting a brick factory and a coconut plantation and finally having lunch in a well-disguised restaurant in the midst of the tropical forest.  

Fish farms on the river

Small boat cruising upstream

Residential boats on the riverbank

Fixing the traps seem to keep everyone busy

Junks carrying bamboo, vegetables, among other things

A fishing boat

A heron out for a stroll...

Young man and his wicker baskets (possibly used for traps)

Bricks galore!

Giant kiln in brick factory

looking up the chimney inside the kiln

Kiln entrance with niche for incense for the gods

Bricks sticking out are used as steps for workers to climb up to the top of the kiln

Kiln entrance showing ash left behind when the bricks were finished firing.  This entrance would have been completed sealed when the fire was on.

Classic Vietnamese stilt house

Coconut farm

A sharp blade is used to open up the coconut - all done manually

Coconut baby

Coconut candy

Snake wine!  Don't know what's the correlation between snakes and coconut, but this was at the shop in the coconut farm

Boat with coconut cargo - workers taking a break on their hammocks

Another coconut cargo - this was included here just because I like the backdrop

Logging

Going up a tributary to lunch, read about the unique dish we had on Foodsparks