Showing posts with label mekong delta. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mekong delta. Show all posts

Tuesday, 2 August 2016

Mekong Delta River tour; 2 Day 1 Night Homestay

Been out of crazy city civilisation for a few days, touring the incredible Mekong Delta river through Kim Travels tours, I would 100% recommend visiting Mekong Delta and it's floating markets, I would also massively recommend if you have the homestay option to do this instead of a hotel, not only is it much more authentic you are literally fully immersed in river life staying in a kind of shack made out of leaves right on the riverside in the middle of the Vietnamese wilderness. So through the tour we booked we got picked up by a bus around 7:30 AM at the hostel to part of Mekong Delta river, once there we boarded a longboat and cruised down the river, our first stop was one of the on land markets where the locals sold anything from sarongs to skinned alive frogs (I kid you not I watched it happen by accident it was gross), the market was really interesting to walk around as the produce was so diverse but be warned it is pretty graphic in terms of animal parts and doesn't smell particularly wonderful. After we then went to see how the locals made rice paper for spring rolls, how they made coconut candy and honey tea, i'll break this up with some portraits I took at the market and the local cuisine introduction.
lady selling seafood- on land market
little boy sizing up the tourists 
lady selling various meats - on land market
Local Cuisine- How they make Rice Paper
a stall holding relaxing after the market rush
two of the trader market boats on the river 


Mekong Delta continued - ft pictures of me a sweaty mess

Next up we drove the boat to a nearby restaurant and had lunch (included in tour) a simple meal, local cuisine (fish, rice, salad etc) after this we were then taken out in a one of the long canoe boats and rowed through a quite jungle river it was very idyllic and we got to wear the traditional sun hats. This marked the end of our first day and we then journeyed back in the boat to the meeting spot in the town, this is where my friend and I were meeting our homestay hosts who preceded to turn up on motorbikes and signalled for us to hop on to get to our final destination. If you've never been on a motorbike in SE Asia be assured its absolute chaos and you spend the whole ride fearing for your life (its also really fun). The homestay itself (Hung's Homestay) was a group of stick and leaf shacks right on the river in the middle of the local village, it was so ridiculously simple and beautiful literally being right in the middle of nature, pictures do not do it justice.



our jungle shack - Hungs homestay

After a meal cooked by our hosts (with us helping) we went to bed in our mosquito netted cabin (bring a ridiculous amount of mosquito spray you'll need it) . The next day was visiting the floating markets where traders and farmers brought all their produce to sell and exchange, it was pretty cool to look at but we weren't able to get too close to the boats unless we were buying. After this we stopped at the garden nearby (basically a jungle) and went for a wander around and played with puppies and that concluded our trip. I'd hands down recommend it (roughly $45 which is 1 million and 50 VND)