Down the Mekong Delta, Day 1 January 19

Sunday, January 19th

This morning we boarded a big tour bus and headed to the Mekong Delta. We drove about three hours and stopped. We boarded a boat and headed out to Dragon Island on the Mekong Delta.

Our boat to Dragon Island.

View from the boat.

First stop, a lesson in beekeeping. The tour guide talked to us about beekeeping. We acturally knew a lot more than he did!! 

Bee hives.

Our tour guide got stung!!

We were treated to a cup of honey tea, honey bananas, honey ginger and honey/sesame candy.

Next stop was a fruit tasting and a singer singing traditional music.

Pineapple, papya, dragon fruit, and some kind of apple.

We boarded the boat and headed to Tortoise Island where we took a canoe ride on a canal.

The river was like bumber cars. One canoe after another, trying to avoid each other.There were a few bumps.

After the canoe ride  we got  back on our boat and headed to another island. Here we had lunch, visited the crocodile farm and walked around town.

Crocodile farm. The crocodiles were lazily waiting for the tourists to feed them meat from a fish pole hung over the water. 

On another island a demonstration on how they processed coconut to make coconut candy.

Here they also made Snake wine. Snakes are put into jars of rice wine, where the snake bodies mix with the wine to make a specialitry wine.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_wine

Small cobra snakes and a scorpion are marinated in the rice wine. There are many medicinal uses for snake wine. 

Of course Charlie and Jon just had to taste the snake wine!

We got back on the boat and returned to our bus. We headed to Can Tho where we would spend the night for the next day tour to the Cai Rang floating market.

Our evening meal.