Mekong River 1 Day Tour

I promised to myself that if I come back to visit Ho Chi Minh City in the future, I'd try the Mekong Day Trip. Last June 2016, I was given the chance to come back and because we were curious to know and experience the Mekong River tour, we booked for a one day tour to Mekong Delta at The Sinh Tourist travel agency. The cost was 199,000 VND or roughly 9USD for a day tip. This was our tour voucher. 

We were asked to come to the Tourist Agency's office at 7am of the following day and we boarded an air-conditioned bus towards My Tho. This is the city considered to be the gateway to Mekong Delta. We boarded a motorboat to cruise the mighty river. The Mekong is a trans boundary river in South East Asia and is the world's 12th longest river. From the Tibetan Plateau, the river runs through the China's Yunnan province, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. 

The weather was great despite of being in the rainy season of Vietnam.

It was a busy day for this tour guide. Because our bus was full, we had to be divided to 2 motorboats. He had to jump from one boat to the other to explain about Mekong.

But while he was busy lecturing, we were also busy taking photos at the back. The floating houses behind me are where fishes are farmed.

We stopped by what looked like a gift shop full of goods made of coconuts. I was not quite interested but it was great to know that aside from fishing in the river, the locals are also finding ways to use their resources and sell it for extra money.

Our group then moved on to see how rice is being converted to rice paper. We had some free taste and it was good.

Surprisingly lunch time came early and we were served with these big fishes from the Mekong. My mouth drools seeing this photo again. 

There is one restaurant personnel for each table to prepare the Vietnamese way of eating fish. She took out what looked like a clear rice paper and placed some fish meat, noodles and cucumber and wrapped them all up and gave each of us at least 3. It was amazingly good! We were also served deep friend spring rolls, sweet sour vegetable soup, caramelized pork in clay pot and rice. 

The Korean table mates that we had ordered the sweetened sticky rice which was shaped like a ball. The staff opened and served it into pieces. The Korean ladies were kind to also let us try it. 

After the satisfying lunch, we went back to the boat and continued cruising the river.

We passed by a place where a lot of coconut trees can be seen. The guide asked us if we'd like to have our photos taken in this scenic spot. Of course, I lined up to have my photo.

We came to this bee keeping farm and enjoyed a free taste of their honey tea.

It was refreshing. I wanted to buy one but I still had my honey lemon concentrate that I bought from Penang 2 months ago. Anyway, the people on our group bought bottles. It's also a good way to support locals and their products.

We were asked to walk for a few meters and we were led to ride these horse drawn carts. 

We reached a restaurant and were served these fresh fruits. While enjoying the seasonal tropical fruits, we were entertained by Vietnamese Traditional Music.

They called this music Dan Ca Tai Tu. A folk art form from Southern Vietnam accredited by UNESCO in 2013 as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.Though I did not understand any word, I feel that the performers were giving their best to share to us their unique heritage.

We walked a few meters again and were asked to board a small hand rowing boat to get to our bigger motorboat. 

The boat driver was a lady and there were 4 of us passengers. My friend saw that there was an extra oar and so he helped row the boat. 

Our last stop was a coconut candy factory. It was where we were showed how the process was. There was also a free taste but the candy was flavored ginger! I did not quite like it but I bought other flavors for friends and family back home.

It was an extremely busy day of cruising, rowing, and walking. Not really as fun as I expected but it was an educational one because of seeing how the people live near the great river. Thank you for reading and 'til next blog!

Hopping to Ho Chi Minh City

For the next adventure I was fortunate enough to have a travel buddy from our office, Wincee. We only had a month to plan for our backpacking. It was nerve wrecking because we had to look for acceptable hotels, cheap flights and plan for activities for the 3 cities that we had to visit namely: Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, Phnom Penh and Siem Reap in Cambodia.

The photo below showed us with each of our backpacks for the one week travel. This was taken from Suvarnabhumi Airport. We then hopped on a free shuttle that runs between this new airport and to Bangkok's old airport: Don Meuang Airport to board Airaisa flight FD 654 to Ho Chi Minh City.

taken from Wincee's facebook account

I'd like to note that before we were to board the plane, Airaisa's ground personnel almost did not allow us to go. She asked us to show our return flight via the same city which we did not have because we plan to depart from Siem Reap back to Bangkok. She mentioned a lot of tourists have been asked to go back to Bangkok or not allowed to step into Vietnam because of the lack of return flights. Whoa! She was strict than the immigration officers who asked us no questions! We were honest, we don't plan to work nor go TNT in Vietnam. In case Vietnam immigration officers won't allow us to enter their country, then fine. (But I still prayed they would allow us).

We arrived in Tan Son Nhat International Airport in HCMC after an hour and a half flight. The immigration officer did not ask us for any questions. Filipino citizens are allowed 21 days in the country and so we were finally in! Taking a shameless twofie after our arrival.

We asked our hotel prior to our arrival to arrange for a taxi to pick us up. We were very happy to see this man.

The airport was about 30 mins away from where we stayed. While on the way, Wincee noted that  HCMC's vibe feels like being in Cebu City. True enough, I felt it too (or I guess we just missed Cebu). The buildings and cars felt like being in Cebu's street except for the gazillions of motorcyles on the road.

I am not exaggerating. There were a lot of motorcycles around. We learned that HCMC's population was around 11 million people and 7 million of them have motorcycles. (Ok, so not gazillion, only million).

The hotel we chose to stay was called Hong Han Hotel. This is situated in Bui Vien street which is part of District 1, the popular tourist area. The receptionist, Ms Hue, greeted us warmly and checking in was a breeze.

She was thoughtful as to what activities we planned to do but since we already planned to purchase tour tickets from a tour company near the hotel, we politely refused. She still helped us with a couple of things, though. We booked our bus ride to Phnom Penh, Cambodia through her and she helped us change our US Dollars to Vietnam Dong. I felt like a millionaire there for a minute. 1 US Dollar is 22,000 Vietnam Dong. If you have 100 US Dollars for pocket money it would be 2,200,000 Vietnam Dong. Ms Hue also warned us to mind our bags as there are snatchers riding on motorcycles lurking in the city.

We were very happy that our room is the first room on the second floor. We did not have to struggle with our bags through a long flight of stairs. The room was big and clean and just like how it was photographed on the review websites.

Next blog will be about the things we did in Ho Chi Minh City :) Thank you for your time.