Our driver now headed out of town (and that took a while, traffic was terrible) and we drove to My Tho where we stopped to catch a small boat to Qui Island.
We watched a woman make rice paper for spring rolls. The brown rice husks are used for fueling the fire and here she is spreading the rice and water mixture onto a hot surface over a cooker.
She puts a lid on the cooker to steam the rice water.
Lifting off the cooked rice paper.
You can see the rice paper hanging from the table to dry.
Fun stuff up next!
Steeped: A whole venomous snake is placed into a glass jar of rice wine or grain alcohol, sometimes along with smaller snakes and medicinal herbs and left to steep for many months. The wine is drunk as a restorative in small shots or cups. The snakes may be inserted into the container while still alive, causing them to drown on their own, or the snake may be stunned first by being placed on ice, after which the distiller cuts the snake open, guts it, and then sews it shut again. Upon removal from the ice, the snake will briefly reawaken and thrash around, before curling into an aggressive striking pose and dying. The latter method is sometimes preferred because the removal of the snake's digestive tract can noticeably reduce the pungent smell of the finished wine, and because the snakes often die in a coiled position that is visually attractive inside the jars, suggesting the snake was fierce in spirit.
Our guide, Nam, and me with the wine. That look? That's me thinking, "I can't believe I'm actually going to drink this (admittedly tiny, tiny) cup of snake wine."
It wasn't bad.
How about some puffed rice and coconut candy instead of snakes? Yeah? Me too.
This man is stirring rice grains into hot ash and it then pops just like popcorn.
See the white popped rice? He then dumps it all into the square box screen to filter out the ash.
Here the puffed rice is being pressed into a sweet base, probably coconut candy. Our guide called it "rice pizza".
The mixture is cut and packaged for sale in stores.
Free samples of the different types of coconut candy and rice bars along with hot tea. I did buy some of the coconut candy.
Little bottles of snake wine for sale. We didn't buy any.
We got back on the boat and headed down river to our next stop. Vinh Long.
Next was a ride on a much smaller, and non-motorized, boat.
Your intrepid explorer, trying to not get heat stroke.
That's Alex and Amar, our two fellow travelers, under those hats.
That's our boat on the left. Ready to take us to the next part of our trip.
Off on the boat again, heading to the place where we will eat lunch, we see a fisherman pulling in his nets.
Lunch was filling and delicious and we ate it outside. This is a fried elephant ear fish, the cook put most of the flesh in spring rolls for us but there was still plenty to pick off of the fish. There was also chicken soup, rice, pork and vegetables, prawns, and fruit.
A jackfruit tree just behind our outdoor table.
Papaya.
Don crossing the "monkey bridge".
We got back on the boat for our hour long ride to Can Tho.
Alex and Amar, the only other people on this tour besides us.
The large pot is for storing potable water.
While we were boating around the Mekong Delta our driver had been on the road to Can Tho with our backpacks in the van. He met us at the quay in Can Tho and drove us to our hotels.
Can Tho at night.
I'll post all the pictures of the floating market of Can Tho tomorrow, plus our visit to a noodle factory.
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