Vietnam: Mekong Coconut Factory, Horse Ride and Night Life

Ho Chi Minh or Saigon is such a dynamic city. It is always buzzing with people from different cultures and heritages, plus, there's always a lot of places to see and things to do.

Like most tourists who visit Saigon, we toured the city by bus and saw the seemingly familiar structures of their buildings (in fact, the way they build their residential and commercial buildings is similar to the way our townhouse back home was built); we found out that there's a couple of Jollibee branches in the city; we must've walked a couple of kilometers just to shop at Ben Thanh market; we joined a pick up tour and explored the Cu Chi tunnels; we took a river cruise at the Mekong Delta followed by a tour of the spots surrounding the river --- got to play with a beehive, carry a snake and drink a cup of pollen juice.

It was our second day in Vietnam. Jem and I wanted to make the most of it. Luckily, the Mekong River tour included a few more surprises than we expected.

Mekong Delta Tour - Beehive, Pollen Drink and Snake

This is still a continuation of my second day at Vietnam. Previously, I shared with you the interesting cruise I did with my friend Jem at Mekong River. But prior to that, there were some exciting stuff we did that morning. I'll just summarize them for you:

SHOPPING!
Many of the merchandise we saw in the stalls looked like what we usually see in our own tiangge here in the Philippines except for the Vietnamese hats and the traditional Vietnamese Aodai, the beautiful dress of Vietnamese women.

BEEHIVE DELIGHT!

Never in my entire life had I touched a bee, more so a beehive for that matter. It was quite scary! But since everyone was doing it, I put on a brave suit and smiled for the camera... for at least a few seconds, before I ran out of there. LOL! Below is a video Jem took of the beehive and its caretaker and how she was blowing some of the bees away so tourists can taste the honey right from the hive. Yikes!

Mekong River Cruise @ Vietnam

Let me continue my travelogue about my journey to Vietnam. We are now on our second day and we were scheduled to go to Mekong River. Let me give you a brief background first about this historical tourist destination...

The Mekong River is the longest river in the Southeast Asian region. It is 2,700 miles (or 4,350 kilometers) and flows through through China, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. Does this mean I've practically been to the tips of these wonderful countries? Hehehe.

Anyway, the brown water-ways of the Mekong serve as the region's foremost conduit for their local transportation and trade. It is also known as the Lancang River in China, which is considered to be the heart and soul of mainland Southeast Asia. There are more than 60 million people who depend on the river and its tributaries for supplies of food, water, transport and a lot of other aspects of their daily lives. The Mekong river supports one of the world’s most diverse fisheries, and is second only to Brazil’s Amazon River. How amazing is this? And I'm so happy that I've been here and experienced it all.

Mekong River is at the southern part of Ho Chi Minh. Here's a video Jem took while we were riding the bus going there:

Finally, after an hour or so, we got here at the docking station. This is the place where I bought my Vietnamese hat. Had I been a lot thinner, people could've mistaken me to be one of the locals. Teehee.

We rode these boats on the way to the narrower parts of the river. Since Mekong River is the longest river in Southeast Asia, the 7th longest in Asia, and the 12th longest in the world, it took some time before we got to the most exciting part.

Watch this video Jem took while we were riding this bigger boat:

After lunch, we took a walk heading to the docking station of the bancas. It was a good way to burn some calories as the walk was a bit long.

Ho Chi Minh City - Starting Day 2 Right

We just survived our first day at Ho Chi Minh. On our second day, Jem and I woke up early because we had a jam packed day ahead of us.

Jem started it with her usual morning meditation while I stayed at the balcony to have my instant breakfast of noodles and pastries.


Right on that spot, I noticed how narrow the street was below me, and how much it reminded me of Manila, at least those parts near slum areas where houses are small, cluttered and packed with lots of people.


However, looking at my surroundings that early morning, I also noticed the difference. From first glance, the view may seem blah, but looking at the houses more closely, they were actually narrow, tall buildings with a hint of modern style. That made me smile.


A few blocks away from where we were staying at Pham Ngu Lao District, we passed by ABC Bakery. The bread smelled so good even from the outside that we decided to take a peek and eventually decided to have some proper breakfast.