Christmas in July

Feliz navidad!

Friday was an uneventful day. Saturday kicked off with bánh mì, Vietnamese sandwiches, at the place that Trang recommended, and I have to say it was the best bánh mì I've ever had. I usually don't like them, and this one was delicious. Elliot and I went on the river tour on Saturday. Getting there was as much of a journey as the tour itself. Usually, whenever I show the taxi driver the tour office's business card, they take me almost there but then try to veer off in another direction and I have to demand that they stop and let me out. Then I walk a short way to where the office is actually located. This time, I went to the tour company's website to make sure I had the right address to show the taxi driver. This time, he veered off almost from the start. I knew we were headed in the right general direction, but instead of taking the highway he took small roads through town, almost exactly the path we would take if we were going back to Trang's parents' house. Since that house and the office are in the same district, I thought maybe he was just taking a different route. However, things started going south or, technically, west. He stopped to ask for directions. He took us into densely overgrown neighborhoods with roads that were half mud. We passed a sign for our tour company, pointing into an even narrower path. At this point, I figured we were probably close enough to our actual destination, and that we should just get out and walk the rest of the way. I figured we'd reached the place where past taxi drivers have tried to take me. We paid and got out and to be honest the taxi driver seemed relieved to get out of the boonies. We started walking. When the highway wasn't around the first bend, I wondered whether I'd jumped the gun on getting out. When the highway wasn't around the second or third or fourth bend, I started to get a little worried. How much farther would it be? We weren't lost in that there was only one way we could go, but I also realized that I had no idea where we were. The only thing for it was to keep walking. In the end it wasn't that far, maybe a 20-minute walk, but it was a long 20 minutes of me asking myself whether I would be responsible for getting Elliot lost in the delta. [Elliot, who was apparently under no stress at the time, says it was his favorite part of the day because he got to see things he wouldn't have otherwise seen -- mostly bridges and backyards.]

The weather was kind of gray for the river tour, but the hidden sun kept the temperature a little lower than usual. We started out at Phoenix Island, which is under renovation in preparation for the lunar new year. The nine dragon columns were undergoing a radical paint job.

Kicking off the trip with some coconut

Freshly painted column in the foreground, compare to
the one in the background

"1000-banana"

We visited the coconut candy factory, but it wasn't terribly exciting for either of us since we aren't big fans of processed coconut. Our next stop was an apiary that serves honey tea and fresh fruit. Elliot got to add dragonfruit to the list of new foods he's tried in Vietnam. We roamed through the orchards and I saw several milk apple trees laden with fruit, a fruit I have yet to try. When we got to the end of the path we reached a road where there was a horse-drawn cart waiting for us. If this was the same horse that has pulled the cart the last two times I made this trip, I can happily report that he is looking a lot less bony nowadays. The last leg of the trip was a sampan ride through a tributary, back to our big boat.

Molding semi-hardened candy into regular strips

My first time seeing a water coconut flower!

We decided to spend Christmas eve on one of the islands, rather than go back to the city. Over lunch we were visited by some colossal butterflies and black wasps with iridescent blue wings. Elliot tried yet another new fruit: a custard apple.

In the late afternoon we took a walk along the edge of the island, up against people's yards. We passed as many clucky chickens as yappy dogs. The Mekong comes in and out with the tide here, and at the time of our walk we were actually well below water level.

Roofing - a roof made from these lasts seven years

We enjoyed a prix fixe dinner with five courses, which started out with alarmingly small portions but added up to a satisfying meal by the end. It started off with corn with some sort of fishy addition, then a grilled shrimp paste on bamboo, then fried wontons, shrimp (and an herbal finger bowl for after), and rice served with a fish dish and grilled beef on a bed of watercress. We thought that would be it, but the meal was concluded with a pot of tea and perfectly ripe mango. With the weather and lack of most traditions, it didn't feel quite like Christmas eve, but it certainly felt special.

Despite the long day, persimmons (another new fruit for Elliot) and persistence kept us awake until midnight. We toasted in Christmas with some red Dalat wine.

This morning we came back to Ben Tre to get our things sorted out for our next island destination: Phú Quôc. We'll be getting there by bus and boat, and I expect more transportational adventures to pepper the journey. Unfortunately, I won't have my computer until I get back, so let me wish you an early happy new year.

Heading back to the mainland