Day 12 – Mekong Delta to HCMC, last day of tour

Woke up in the heat of the Mekong Delta for the last day of the Intrepid Food Adventures tour of Vietnam (though I’m probably going to do a summary tour post in a day or so once I’ve had some reflection time).

Had a fabulous final breakfast of omlette and fresh baguettes, home made jam, coffee, and fruit (I think). A couple of the family’s children were running around, so there were some pics and lots of cute smiles all round. It has been a highlight of the trip, simple pleasures, eating food of the region, nothing flash, fancy or slightly fake. One of those days to realise that there really are friendly people in Vietnam, that not everyone is out to take your money or fleece you. One of those days where you really fall in love with a place.

The boat back went through one of the floating markets, where we were surrounded by boats selling pineapples, durian, watermelon, lots of fresh fruit and produce, a real farmers market. No boats came up trying to sell chocolate bars, just a lot of smiling and waving. We hopped off for a bit of a village tour, saw yet more rice paper making — it’s a big thing in VN, every area claims to make it different but this time it was a little unusual, thin streams of rice flour and water into a hot wok, making an angel-hair pasta kind of paper. There was also a fish sauce factory, I loved the smell but L not so much of a fan.

Final stop on the village tour was where they made snake wine, rice puffs, and flavoured toffee. Rice puffs making was a big hit: take a huge wok, add local fine black sand, a little oil, heat the absolute bejeezus out of it, then throw in a big bowl of rice. Stir quickly, and watch all the rice pop. Scoop into a strainer, sift out the sand, and then pass on to the next wok where they add caramel and flavour, stir lots, then plonk it in a big tray where it gets compacted, sliced and passed on to the packers.

Back on the boat briefly, then we bid bye bye to our guide buddy and bonjour to the bus. Up the road a short way to a temple, one for the newish religion of the region, a fusion religion of buddhism, confucianism, christianity and taoism. Lots of bright colours but by making women enter through one door and men the other, it’s a bit wrong still.

Up the highway to another stop for rest and icecream — had one scoop durian (good, creamy, rich) and one scoop taro (unexpectedly wonderful, great flavour). Back on the freeway where we fortunately didn’t get stopped by police, and then back to the two star Asian Ruby 3 (where we had a really noisy room, had to ask for the aircon to be switched on, and had very intermittent wi-fi.

A couple of hours to relax then off to the big market. Big market is hot, cramped, and full of hard bargainers. There’s a ring of shops around the edge that have fixed prices, unfortunately the t-shirt I wanted was most expensive, so probably won’t end up with one. The rest are usual markets, everyone selling the same thing, but these folk have obviously had it too good as they started ridiculously high and then were very reluctant to budge. Ended up scoring a Ho Chi Minh t-shirt for 65000 (t-shirts are 50-60000 in Hanoi) and walked away from a few that weren’t willing to go down to a good compromise. From L’s Cambodia experience she’s got an idea of what good prices are, and the market vendors aren’t coming even close to those. And I don’t think we’re being unreasonable — bought a shirt at a fixed price vendor for 140000, and for an identical shirt in a bargaining stall started at 350000. I showed them the price tag of 140000 and they still wouldn’t go near it.

Then we were off to our last cooking lesson, with a VN celebrity chef. No spring rolls this time, we made a squid salad, fish claypot, and an egg and tomato soup (sounds bad but tastes amazing, lots of lovely flavour in an amazingly clear soup base). At this point the group started to splinter, with a few heading to bed for early flights, and the rest heading off to get ripped off royally at the rooftop bar at Rex. A watered down sea breeze cocktail was 259000 vnd, before the waiter then added an arbitrary amount of surcharge (about 20% but it varied from person to person). If it had been a fabulous cocktail I’d gladly have paid, but this was just watered down booze and fruit juice.

Group then split off more as I hit the hay. L has a flu so she’s taking it easy for now.

Food Adventure Tour: done.

(p.s. we still have two more days in HCMC before we head home.)