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I believe my overriding memory of this trip will be feeling sticky. You’re in an air conditioned room and it’s quite cool but even so, you feel a bit warm in the morning after being under the covers. But step out the door and it’s like someone immediately applied syrup to your whole body. But, having said that, I suspect, much like the Costa Rica trip, which was very similar in that way, I won’t remember the stickiness and I will remember many other things – the Khmer people, the temples, the markets, the river, etc. But right this second, it’s the stickiness.
The morning excursion to Cai Be was on a small boat down the canals, past the floating market to a brick factory. The floating market was a bit of a disappointment since there wasn’t much going on. The whole concept is apparently diminishing as bridges have been built among the islands and people just take their scooters around instead. But some boats were still parked out in the canal and were interesting to see.
The brick factory didn’t look like much from the outside. Just a brick wall, a door and some corrugated tin roofing. But it was good sized inside. It’s more of a ceramic factory than a brick factory although they make bricks as well. But they also make quite a variety of clay objects. We were struck by the differences in design – clearly the result of meeting some order. There were Italian style pots for plants, 4 foot statues that looked like the Easter Island heads, small pots and ‘plates’, rabbits, etc. Quite a variety. The first people we saw were two men loading the clay into a machine to squish out the air and form it into ‘strips’. Kind of like a giant play-doh machine. But the clay is heavy.
The guy putting it in was 70+ according to the guide. Hard work. From there it was put into a mold on a wheel and a machine ‘squished’ it into shape (say a pot). Every 10 seconds or so, a guy pulled out the ‘plunger’ and scraped off the excess clay. From there some ornamentation was added, which likely was done with a stamp (we didn’t see that), then put aside to sit and dry for a bit. Then into the kiln which is rice husk fed, where they are heated for weeks until cured. It’s someone’s job (very important) to keep an eye on the fire so it doesn’t get too hot or go out. And keep feeding in the rice husks to keep the fire going. The kiln is *big* and holds a lot of stuff. Which given it takes 6 weeks to fire something, you want to do as many as you can at once.
The business is family owned. The workers are not part of the family but they bring their family with them. There was a little girl, maybe 2 or 3 running around shaking everyone’s hand and generally being incredibly cute. We all took pictures of her. Marion made her a drawing which she carried around happily. She was quite sad when we left. It’s probably a tough gig for her most days.
As an aside, our guide has been telling us that everything we’re going to see is beautiful. We’re going to go see a beautiful temple, cruise down a beautiful canal, see a beautiful fruit garden, etc. And while some of it has been quite nice, much of it hasn’t quite measured up to beautiful. As I told Marion, it’s like the quote from Princess Bride – “You keep using that word… I don’t think it means what you think it means…”.
From the ceramic factory we went to a factory where they make rice paper, coconut candy and popped rice. There was a lady making rice paper. It’s a very tedious process but still requiring concentration. You lay out this rice liquid on a hot plate type thing, wait for it to harden a bit, then very delicately pull it off with a machete like tool. I imagine it’s very easy to do it wrong, but she just kept at it, one after the other.
The coconut candy process was interesting as well (and still pretty manual). Someone husks the coconut, then it’s sliced, and someone scrapes out the shavings by rubbing it on a metal thing, then it’s pressed to get the juice. Then something else happens and it turns into candy 😊.
The popped rice is cooked in big metal basins left over from the war. Sand is used to heat the rice, which then pops, and the sand (and husks) are sifted out. Brown sugar and maybe some other flavors are added and it’s kind of like a Rice Krispie treat. Very yummy.
The candy factory also had a souvenir area and we managed to buy some stuff. It’s the first Vietnamese stuff we’ve bought.
The next day, Deb, one of our fellow travelers said, “don’t you think the ceramic factory and coconut candy factories were a little contrived? Like they’re there just for the tourists?” It did actually, now that she mentioned it, and lessened the experience somewhat to think about it. She ultimately asked Bros, who told us that no, the ceramic factory was legit. But the coconut candy place is a demonstration facility. Which in hind sight made sense since they couldn’t possibly produce any volume there. It really wouldn’t have lessened the experience if they had told us it was a demonstration facility. But trying to pull a fast one, that bugged me a little.
From there we headed to My Tho and to an historic house and fruit garden. As we walked down a canal on the way our guide found a plant with some seed pods and had us rub them. After a bit, they popped!, causing us all a little fright. It was pretty funny.
The house was a private home, built in the 1800s. It’s quite pretty and has a big garden with lots of fruit trees. The goal of the trip was to see the house and sample some fruit. We wandered the garden a bit, then went inside for some tea and fruit samples.
The owners had decorated for Halloween and wore witch’s hats. Cute but oddly strange. I was trying to remember the fruit I didn’t like in Australia and was fairly certain it was jack fruit. But I tried some and it wasn’t bad (not great but not bad). Checking back in the Australia log, it was jack fruit I didn’t like. So either my tastes have changed or the fruit was a lot better. Which may be the case because I thought I didn’t like mango either, but the mango was quite good. So whatever kind (or ripeness) this was, was different. The house was quite beautiful (the guide was right on that score). It was built by a Vietnamese who was partly French in the early French era. He was apparently a big deal for helping with local agriculture.
Then a quick jaunt to the coconut farm island. It was supposed to be a walk through the palm groves but was more of a forced quick march to the end, then ‘we’ll see coconut groves in the canal from the boat so we’re going back’. Wait, what?, um, ok. So back to the boat. Both here and in the previous places we visited, we got the sense the guide wasn’t too excited about having to be there and rushed us through.
On the way back to the boat in the water taxi, the sun was such that it was beating down on our side. So I got a side-ful for about 20 minutes. People were using the life vests as shade. It was stifling. Every time we returned to the boat we were greeted with cold washcloths and a cool drink of something (like ginger ale). A nice touch and REALLY felt good.
Back on the boat we headed off towards the canal. And it was actually quite interesting. It was VERY busy. By far the most traffic we had seen on the water. The late afternoon light was great. There were in fact lots of coconut groves along the way. And you could imagine how difficult it would be to drive your swift boat along here during the war, not knowing if the jungles were full of Viet Cong waiting to shoot you or not. But luckily we didn’t have to worry about that and it was kind of pretty. The variety and quantity of boats was pretty amazing. We continued until a few hours after dark before we finally anchored somewhere in the river in preparation for our final push into Ho Chi Minh City tomorrow.
At some point, someone, I think it was Mary, announced we needed a group photo and it should be divided into just the women and just the men. The women all lined up and I was handed someone’s phone to take the picture, which I did. But then, of course, I was handed another phone. Then another. And soon, everyone in the picture needed a shot taken with their phone. Well, there were 13 women so it became a bit of an assembly line. Every phone was different and after the first 4 or 5 it became silly. I just held up the phone and clicked. Put it down, grabbed the next one and clicked. Whatever state anybody was in at the moment, I captured. And, of course, I had to take one with my phone *and* my camera as well. The one on my phone came out pretty good. I hope everyone else got one they liked.
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