After 2 weeks of intense and interesting company visits, the last part of our trip was to visit the Mekong Delta. The Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam is a huge labyrinth of rivers and islands with floating markets and villages surrounded by rice fields. We were picked up from the hotel at 07:30 am. After 2,5 hour drive we arrived at Ben Tre. Our tour of the region started here. Boats are the main means of transportation. We boarded our boat, which took us on the rivers of the Mekong Delta.
Our first stop was a coconut factory. The Ben Tre area is famous for its coconut candy. Local women work in small factories making these sweets spending their hours boiling the sticky coconut before rolling it out and slicing them into pieces.
Later transportation got small and personal. We were divided into groups and got on small row boats. Now it was Dr. Braun’s time to show his rowing skills. We drew for 15 minutes under Braun’s leadership. During this 15 minutes trip, we enjoyed the fresh air along the canal and beautiful water coconut tree scenery.
After a little walk, we got on tuc tuc’s. Some of us had some difficulty fitting into the tuc tuc’s. After a 15-minute ride, we boarded a large wooden boat for lunch. We were shown how to make Vietnamese spring rolls and made our own spring rolls. After spending 2.30 hours on the boat we drove to Can Tho to stay overnight.
Can Tho is home to 1.5 million people, and it is the capital city of the Mekong Delta. When we arrived at the hotel, some of us went directly to the roof of the hotel where a bar was found and watched the sunset. The last evening of our trip we ate at a restaurant where we could also watch Federer’s semi-final match against Nadal.
