This weekend, we had the opportunity to explore the Mekong River and everything surrounding it. I stocked up on snacks the night before our three hour bus ride, and off we went. Honestly it felt a lot shorter than it actually was considering I slept through most of it. When we arrived, we had a delicious lunch before resting in our new temporary rooms for a bit. The resort was so nice, and as a person who’s never travelled to a tropical country before, it looked like all the ones I have seen on Instagram before.
It wasn’t long before we had to head out again though to play a bunch of water games with the UEF students! We dressed in traditional ao ba ba, a type of outfit farmers wear. Despite the sweat that came with it, I was glad it helped me avoid being sunburned. The water games first consisted of rock paper scissors, and whoever lost had to jump into the water. I won my first round, but the second time around I wasn’t so lucky. The water was very muddy, and the texture under my feet literally felt like stepping on bananas, but it was still fun as we laughed with everyone else in the water. We then did a bridge game (where you rock back and forth on a bridge and the team who falls off first loses), and then a rope game, which I am honestly still confused about. Nonetheless, all of the water games were really fun, even if I was a little bit freaked out by the murkiness. We also had the opportunity to go catfish fishing, but I had to sit out because I was too scared, oh well.
After heading back to the hotel, all of the girls got into the pool to wash off before heading to dinner and karaoke. I have never had such good mango in my life, I swear I ate like five pieces. That was 100% the highlight of this trip for me, because mango’s are my favorite fruit and you will never catch them being this sweet in the U.S. If you have the opportunity to come to Vietnam just for the mangoes, do it. Karaoke was just as fun though, with everybody coming up to sing different songs and dance with one another.
We had a bright and early day this morning, with a 5:30 wake up time. Why? So that we can go to the Cai Rang floating river market. This was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. There were many, many boats all lined up, serving different items such as fresh fruit and coffee. It was interesting to see how they would hook themselves onto our boat with the rope in order to be able to make their sales. It also made me think about how these people make their livelihoods from this, as the tour guide explained a lot of the locals used this market as their way of income from tourists, and how it’s one of the three floating markets left in Vietnam. This made me think about how something like Covid affected them, as there were little to no tourists around for a couple years, and that is what these people mainly rely on. Another thing that caught my attention was the amount of trash I saw floating in the water. While these markets are fun, and a good experience, the risk of garbage ending up in the river was high, especially since things can fall over the edges of either the market boats or the tourists boats.
After leaving the resort, we headed over to a night market, where we all stopped for durian, cafe drinks, and walking around, before going to lunch. All of the food was unforgettable here, it differed from what we had in Ho Chi Minh and it was fun to try everything. There were a lot more seafood options available, especially a lot of squid. Can’t wait for what the rest of this week will bring! So sad this trip is coming to an end soon.
