The Mekong Delta

Today, our second day in Vietnam we went to the Mekong Delta.  It was about an hour and a half drive to this place and on the way we stopped  to see some giant Buddha statues that were very neat.  We took two boats (for about 40 people) to the first island called Unicorn Island.  There drank tea, watched coconut candy being made, ate fruit and took a small boat ride (4 people per boat) down to meet our bigger boats which took us to turtle island for lunch.  Lunch was a fried fish, literally the whole thing propped up in the middle of the table.  Some of the fish was wrapped in rice paper with some mint leaves and rice noodles.  I tried it, it was certainly different but I much preferred the chicken that was brought later.  There was also rice, some sort of prawn and some kind of soup.  After lunch was over we got back on the boats which took us back to the bus and the bus to Saigon (Ho Chi Min City).  We quickly dropped off our stuff at the ship and headed to the water puppet show.  The water puppets were amazing, very different from any kind of puppet show I have seen.  Tonight we ate at a restaurant where we got to cook the food ourselves (its been a while) in the middle of the table on a little grill.  We ate everything with chopsticks and didn’t drop as much as we did the night before and during lunch.  Maybe by the time we leave Asia we will be experts.  We walked around the market after eating and I of course couldn’t resist getting a traditional outfit that the women wear here.  Now I am back at the ship and am going to go to sleep, I have finally caught up on my blogging and can rest easy.