Merry Christmas from Saigon!

Random pictures

 The ceiling inside the Saigon Opera House

 Art outside the Saigon Opera House. Those are fish traps.

 Yours truly.

I have this every morning for breakfast - watermelon, passion fruit, papaya, pineapple, and Asian pear and dragon fruit with spicy granules on top.

The Mekong Delta part two - floating market and noodle farm

After breakfast at our hotel in Can Tho we walked down to the riverside to meet our guide and get on the boat to the Cai Rang floating market. There are over 200 boats in the floating market and they are anchored there. Smaller boats with produce direct from the farmer sell to the people on the larger boats in the floating market. The larger boats full of produce do not sell direct to individual people (retail) but rather sell to distributors and wholesalers who then sell to smaller distributors and then on to stores and restaurants. The large, anchored boats have samples of the produce they are selling attached to long poles so that the buyers know what is available. Most of the people on the market boats live on them year round, it is their only permanent residence.

A fishing boat with nets.

This is just one of the many pagodas we saw all over Saigon.

This woman came up to our boat to sell us coffee. There are many small boats that are floating kitchens, selling everything from coffee to pho. 

You can buy lunch straight from the smaller boats. No need to go ashore.

Some boats were selling more than one type of produce.

The man on the smaller boat is selling pineapples to the people on the larger boat.

We watched as this man tossed watermelons through portholes into the hold of the boat.

A small floating convenience market on this woman's boat.

The blue building is a floating cafe and store where we later stopped for drinks.

Notice the produce tied to the pole, advertising what this boat has to sell.

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After the floating market we got boated down river and visited a noodle factory. Here you see the rice wrappers drying in the sun.

Just like in the other village, the rice husks are burned as fuel and the rice and water mixture is spread over hot surfaces to cook.

After a demonstration on how to pick up the rice paper and lay it out to dry I am given a chance to try it.

I didn't do too badly for a first try. 

The dried rice paper is put through a machine that looks like a paper shredder to make noodles. The width can be changed by changing the blades.

My turn on the monkey bridge.

 After that we boated to another small village where we rented bikes and off we went. This was some of the most fun I had on this tour.

 There are fruit trees everywhere.

That's Alex on the bridge.

And that's me.

There was a little cafe where we dropped off the bikes. Let's see what's on the menu - 

Grilled rats and snails. Amar bought some rat. I tried it, tasted like pork.

We boated back to Can Tho and then it was a 4 hour van ride back to Saigon.

Petrol station and convenience store on the water.