Mekong delta

Hi all!
I'm actually still in Saigon - my plans to visit Thuyen got pushed back a day so I leave tomorrow at 6:30 am. For anyone I haven't told about this - Thuyen is a former client's (from NC) oldest daughter who lives in a small village in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. I decided to not rent a car and driver (with Kyle's help) but instead am taking the bus with Kyle's consultant who will act as my interpreter/helper for any difficult situations. His English is so-so but I feel very safe/relaxed knowing that he's coming. The car/driver was going to be $250 whereas the bus will probably be like $10 at the most. It'll take more time of course (8-10 hours?), but I don't think a ton more. Either way, it's basically a day's travel. Thuyen has 3 children and so besides children's vitamins, I'm taking a bunch of toys: a soccer ball, this play fishing pole set, a bunch of play cars, a stuffed animal, and a wooden car that's also a shape sorter. I'm also going to leave the family some cash - Kyle told me how to do it so it's not insulting to the family. I'm so excited! I can't imagine I'll have access to the internet (though you never know!) so you probably won't hear from me again until Thursday.

Now to catch you up on the past two days. Yesterday was *awesome*! I did a tour of the Mekong delta region. It took about 3 hours to get there, but it was about 5 times better than the tour of the tunnels the day before. After we got off the bus, we got on a boat and visited a floating market. Basically, it's a bunch of boats that line up to sell products (mostly produce) whole sale. The people are middle men and they live on their boats. They display which product they're selling by hanging one (pineapple, potato, etc) on a stick at the front of their boat. Then buyers drive up in their boats and purchase large quantities of products from them.

Next we visited a place where they make coconut candy and other kinds of candy too - yum! We got to try all kinds and I bought (and already ate) some banana and peanut candy. We also got to see how they make puffed rice - I never quite knew how they made rice krispies or rice cakes, etc but now I do. They made it in a big pot - J and K it was just like the large pot they used to make kettle corn at that farm we went to. I asked to try stirring it and the guy let me and he laughed when my whole body moved instead of just my arms. :) I had a flashback of trying to making fufu in Ghana. After that we went to a village for lunch and then got to ride bikes around the village to check it out. Finally we got to ride in a smaller canoe-like boat down the river which was cool. My pictures from yesterday are awesome...

On this trip there was a guy from Spain so I practiced my Spanish a bit and we hung out and talked on the bus to and from the Mekong delta. On the way home we got in a very lively debate about affirmative action, which apparently they call "positive discrimination" in Spain - basically he doesn't agree with it and I do.

Today I went to the Vietnamese traditional medicine museum. Dr. O or Bretta if you're reading this, you would've loved it. There was lots of info on the history of traditional medicine in Vietnam and what the different herbs are used for etc. It was too far of a walk from my hotel so I had to give in and ride on the back of a motorbike. Here they have helmets for the passengers though and I didn't feel too scared - I ended up taking 3 rides today and I'm used to it now. Jacqui - I had pho for lunch at that place in your book and it was yummy! It was also fun because a 13 year old girl and her dad sat down next to me and we had a lovely conversation b/c they wanted to practice their English. They were so sweet - the dad insisted on buying my lunch! Afterwards I briefly stopped by reunification/independence palace which is the former president of South Vietnam's palace. The North Vietnamese army tanks crashed through the gates here in 1975. At this point my throat started hurting and I was feeling really tired so I hopped on a motorbike and came back to my hotel to take a nap. Hopefully I'm not getting too sick since I'm leaving tomorrow! I'll write again when I can - likely on Thursday.