Me-Kong-ing

With all the tour groups totally shut down for Lunar New Year in Saigon, YuppieNomad and I decided to book a 4 day jaunt down to the 'rice bowl' of Vietnam. We figured we can see a bit of the countryside, get some fruit directly from the orchards and head back up to the city in time for all the craziness of New Year's Eve.

The tour wasn't bad. Saigon to My Tho consisted of being on the bus for a couple of hours, through congested roads spotted with roadside cafes, makeshift motorcycle repair shops and suggestions of the gorgeous scenes to come. We stopped by My Tho, a smallish provincial city and worked our way through the massive markets to the waiting river boats.

Apparently, melons are in seasons. Big melons [edit: hehe, I wrote 'big melons'] everywhere – greens and yellows and deep reds and pinks inside. Alligators, pythons, eels, goats, cows and practically all of God's poor creatures made their way to the butchers in the market.  I'm still a little grossed out at the image of skinned alligators hanging, their mouths, rows of teeth smiling like mountain ridges.

Tours in Asia aren't very interesting in themselves but on the first day:

• We floated down the river to Turtle Island near Ben Tre and had a basic lunch where I talked with the most incorrigible Italian man ever,
• Headed upriver to ooh and ahh at some 'villagers' making coconut candy from scratch (collecting coconuts, extracting juice, etc.). Afterwards, with embarrassed curtsies and bows, two women and three men playing various stringed instruments performed the region's traditional folk dance & songs',
• Rowed boats down natural canals branching off from the larger Mekong delta spillage,
• And boarded the bus again heading to Can Tho.

The second day we floated down the river again, this time to the Cai Rang market - the biggest river market in the delta region.  Ordered chaos reigned at the prosperous junction in the river, and we tourists, heads perched up with cameras ready, stood out like the interlopers in a strange Neverland.  Wooden boats bump against each other as vendors toss melons, jackfruit, cabbage and carrots, bright red and yellow flowers and green bunches of bananas to their buyers on other vessels drifting by. Women in conical hats rowed their thin canoes between larger river vessels, crying out their crops, hanging in bunches atop bamboo poles.  Fishermen caught winks of sleep on hammocks as the sun beat down on their shaded eyes before rising to apply bright coats of paint on their ships. Sometimes you can see pairs of bright inquisitive eyes from kids staring back from inside the dark cabins... other times, mothers held out their babies to we modern armchair anthropologists, flashing ivory smiles from their dark faces.

I wondered what they thought of us, as their bright eyes photographed our mouths agape – I wonder what they thought of themselves, and how the logic of fate worked to incite such interest in their daily lives from strange looking people in their comfortable boats.  Why indeed, do I feel such amazement at how these people live: young boys splashing in the brown waters after rushing home from school, women washing their children, vegetables and laundry in the waters, homes built on stilts along the waters edge, without running water or electricity... was I amused, annoyed, or surprised that such conditions still existed in the world – me, used to living my modern apartment, in New York, in America, in the big limitless world?

We waved and shouted our hellos, and they waved and smiled and hammed it up for our flashing bulbs.