An outdoor adventure day has been calling my name after so much time in the city and the Mekong Delta did not disappoint!! It was definitely a tourist-oriented experience, so I know I didn’t get a full picture or idea of anything, but I enjoyed what we did get to see today!
Our first adventure was the 2 hour bus ride down to the delta islands where we sang karaoke for the fourth time of the trip. At 8 am. But the main excursions started on the “dragon island”, where I sampled tea and jelly made from a honeybee farm, held a honeycomb filled with bees, held a large snake on my shoulders, and sampled coconut candy made from scratch onsite. Then tried lots of fruits grown on the island- like mango, pineapple, pomelo, watermelon, and guava- before hopping into a horse carriage to travel further inland. We went straight from the horse carriage to a 4 person canoe to travel down the river back to our main boat. It was so peaceful and beautiful, I really enjoyed it!
We then traveled to a different island, the “phoenix island” for lunch. Lunch was a lot of seafood, which again, I’m not super fond of, but the rice, noodles, and beef were very good. The lunch was a “small” lunch of 8 courses, one of which was a fish that was served fully intact that we had to pull apart ourselves. Personally, not the most appetizing site. But after lunch we had an amazing time with the other activities on the island. We played in what can only be described as floating human bubbles, where we’re sent onto the water in a giant bubble wrap bubble to run around for a few minutes. It was exhausting and super hot inside the bubble but it was so much fun!!! Then, some students fed the crocodiles in the lake and fed the fish from bottles, and it was cool to see the animals up close. I really enjoyed our tourist excursion as it allowed me to turn different parts of my brain off to just enjoy the scenery and environment instead of trying to memorize material like we have in classes.
However, I definitely learned a lot and was very interested in the daily lives of those on the river islands. People seemed to be eating well, but it was still a very underdeveloped, rural community that most would consider lower class. What was fascinating to me, though, was that enough industrialization has made it to the delta that a lot of the minor industries had equipment. For example, at the coconut candy plant, the coconut is their entire livelihood, but they had modern steel machinery to grind and heat the coconut. It was fascinating to see the balance between modern and traditional culture on these islands, especially where it seems like this traditional style of living is almost exploited for the tourism industry.
Regardless, it was a really fun day and I thoroughly enjoyed the Mekong Delta and the people and culture there!
