We jumped in our Mercedes-Benz mini-van/bus at around 7:30 and hit the road. It was supposed to be about a 2 hour drive, but as we were coming into the city of My Tho, our tour guide mentioned that they were having their first ever "Fruit Festival". We happened to drive right into it, and the tour guide asked if we would like to check it out. Of course we said, "Why not?!", we spent the next 20 minutes or so walking through the fruit expo. It was actually pretty cool because the tour guide could explain the fruits and their differences to us. We then hit the road again and jumped on a motorized boat, or rather, a motorized wooden canoe. We cruised for about 20 minutes until docking by this little village where our guide said we would be getting on a smaller boat. Sep and I both looked at each other with a "Why the #$%#?", type look. How could the boat get any smaller?! Well, it did, after a 20 minute wait, this old guy in a canoe came up. He rowed it like a Gondola that you'd see in Italy, but steered with a foot controlled rudder.
We trekked up this tiny tributary for about 1 km. Got off the boat and then the "fun" really began. Sep has this brilliant idea yesterday when we booked the tour that we should do a 2 hour bike ride. Actually, we are both to blame, but we've been making a joke out of it. Imagine this... you're in a jungle, it's 95+ degrees, the humidity level is around 95% and you have the crappiest bikes in the world, now you have to bike for two hours. Sounds fun right?! Hahahah! And we paid to get tortured like that! By this time, we had both downed two bottles of water and soaked through our shirts. I'm glad it's done, but it was truly worth it. We got to see and meet some great people and villages. All through the trip, we had people that would wave or nod. But here, people would smile and say "Hello" I could tell that they truly meant it, and weren't doing it just to be polite. We learned that this area is the major growing area for rice and fruits for the country and world. It was amazing to see where some of the fruit that we eat comes from.
We stopped at a little place where they process coconuts.
Further on the bike ride we stopped at a candy factory were they take the coconut extract and make candy.
We finally made it back to a house with a bunch of huts out back for lunch. As always here, they give us enough food to feed 8 people. Yes, this picture is of a full fish that they deep-fried. This was the second course, after fresh made spring rolls. Following the fish, we had 4 more courses!
After lunch, we jumped back in our transport and came back to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). Tomorrow we go visit the Vietcong tunnels.
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