mekong delta

i finally got out of saigon, but not until my last day in vietnam. woke up at 6:30, left the hotel at 6:45, got to the travel agent place by seven like they said in order to depart at 7:15, but we had to wait around until eight as they funneled various tourists onto various buses, depending on how long the tourist would be spending in the mekong delta. me, i was only going for a one-day trip.

the bus left the city in the pouring rain and drove southward through the pouring rain. after two traffic-filled hours we stopped for a potty break in the pouring rain. we arrived in the town of cae bo in the pouring rain and got onto a boat that looked like one of the boats from the jungle boat at disneyland, only without the festive red-and-white color scheme. oh, it was raining while we were getting onto the boat and started up the mekong river, past floating markets and houses built on stilts over the water and lots and lots of green, leafy trees.

stopped for lunch at a place where they served elephant ear fish, which is a delicacy available only in the mekong, our tour guide had told us back on the bus. he had also wanted to know how many people wanted to sample said delicacy, as they would have to be caught and killed (his words exactly) so they could be cooked prior to our arrival at the restaurant. there were about 35 people in our traveling group (all europeans and australians - i was the only american, as usual) and maybe five or six people opted for the elephant ear fish, which did indeed have big digusting ears and was repulsive looking to me when served to those five or six people, each fish speared on a pair of sharp sticks to give it a natural swimming-like position, right there in the middle of the lunch table.

i ate pork and soup and salad and vegetables. is it me, or is baby corn not widely available in america. it's like, rare here, and i love eating it in asia, where you can get it in most any restaurant. i like to eat baby corn because i can pretend that it's regular-sized corn and that i'm huge. oh, wait. never mind.

we left the boat to walk around some pre-determined shopping areas, as is the norm with tours in asia. it's par for the course: you get cheap, air-conditioned transportation, but you end up having to traipse through gem factories and furniture showrooms. sometimes i get irked at that and sometimes i just don't care that much.

after that we had the option to do more shopping or ride bikes through the jungle for an hour or so, but none of the books looked like they could hold my left leg, much less the rest of me, so i just walked around instead. that was fine. there were nice milk-chocolate colored rivers running here and there, and lots of coconut trees, and big-azz snakes in cages (thankfully). i bought a really cool vietnam-style hat for only one US dollar, one of those conical hats that you envision old vietnamese ladies wearing while they pick rice. no, that's not a stereotype, because i saw lots of ladies fussing with rice plants out in the paddies, and they were wearing the hats! the weather, by the way, in vietnam was great! only while walking around in the jungle was it steamy and hot. the rain had let up, and the sun came out for a bit, and i started getting sweaty as we trudged along. the rest of the time in-country, however, had been pleasantly cool.

it was cold, in fact, later on in the afternoon, after the walking around, when everyone else got done with their bike rides and it was time for a ride on a little teeny rowboat. i opted out of this one, thinking that i would either put a foot through the floor of the boat when i stepped into it, or i would ground the vessel so deeply into the beach that they'd never be able to set off from the riverside and paddle onwards to where we would be meeting up with the larger boat on which we had arrived at that point.

why was it cold? oh yeah, it had started raining again. not just raining, really, but pouring. to make the forrest gump comparison again, i'd have to say that in vietnam on that day there was rain coming up from the ground, and sideways rain that stung at your cheeks, and all sorts of rain. i figured i'd be the only one walking back to the bigger boat, but about half of our group ended up going with me. the other half, brave or foolish souls (i couldn't tell) opted to ride in the little rowboats on a river course through the middle of the island and then meet up with us in like half an hour. i felt for them as they got in the rowboats, however, because the rain was really coming down, and it was kind of hard to see through it sometimes. as they rowed away, i thought they would have been more comfortable (and less wet) by falling directly into the river). the rest of us walked back to the boat and sat in there and chatted it up, with the vinyl tarps pulled down over the open sides of the boat. that cut out our view but blocked us from the sideways rain. we also each received a coconut, filled with coconut milk, from the tour guide, who had been hacking away at the pile of coconuts in order to de-top them while we had been bicycling/walking through the jungle.

those who had opted to ride in the rowboats looked miserable when they got back to the boat. to make matters worse, all they'd been doing was riding. it turned out that the little vietnamese ladies at the front and back of each rowboat (which also had seats for four tourists) were in charge of the actual rowing and steering of the vessel. so i was glad that i, for one, had not gone.

with everyone back on board we motored back down the river to the bus. after another shopping stop we were on our way back to saigon. i spent the three hours on the bus (there was lots of traffic) talking to a quartet of very attractive irish girls with whom i'd been chatting on and off with throughout the day. they were all smart and pretty, and had great taste in music. we had time to pretty much tell each other our lives' stories: they were celebrating that two of them had just finished law school and two more only had a year left, and three of the four were engaged, i found out through conversation, trying not to let my smile droop too much when i found that out. it was doubly hard not to get bummed when, through the course of conversation, i found that they all loved the simpsons, and were as bummed as me that sean connery will not be in the forthcoming fourth indiana jones movie, due out next year. not that i don't love amanda and annette, but they never seemed to be that interested in my constant discussion topics of the simpsons, baseball, the indiana jones and star wars trilogies, midgets, etc., while these girls actually KNEW about and ENJOYED that stuff...when one of the girls started singing the "doctor zaeus" song after we got on the ben-esque topic of "planet of the apes" somehow, i almost got down on my knees, right there on the bus, and proposed to her.

despite my hopes for more traffic, we made it back to saigon eventually, at around eight p.m., and we went our separate ways with hugs and quick goodbyes. i'd known there was no use exchanging e-mails (fiancees back in ireland probably wouldn't have been too keen on that), but i'd hoped the goodbye would be longer.

oh well, since we were an hour late getting back to saigon, i now only had an hour to shower and pack up my stuff, as i wanted to leave for saigon airport at nine in order to be there nice and early for the 11:30 p.m. flight that would mark the official start to the end of my vacation and the start of my long trip home.