Vietnam: Mekong Delta
One of the most touted tours from Ho Chi Minh is a nearly 2 hour drive west to the vast Mekong River Delta – an endless maze of rivers and canals where the world’s third biggest river enters the sea. Multi-way tours go up the river and distant isolated communities while shorter trips stick to more touristy spots that jam a whole lot of sightseeing into the experience, often just to extract more money. So I took the traditional boat across main river cruising, visited a cocoa farm, a bee farm, an orchid farm (where inexplicably you get to hold a python on your neck), took a small canoe up a narrow channel, rode a horse buggy, listened to some local high-pitched traditional singing, drank some snake wine, tried coconut candy at a local factory, and passed by a myriad of soviet ire shops. Was it a spectacular experience? Hardly…
