{"id":973,"date":"2014-04-21T16:39:26","date_gmt":"2014-04-21T08:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radcopter.com\/brianandmarisa\/worldtrip\/?p=973"},"modified":"2014-04-21T16:39:26","modified_gmt":"2014-04-21T08:39:26","slug":"vinh-long-meandering-through-the-mekong-delta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/2014\/04\/21\/vinh-long-meandering-through-the-mekong-delta\/","title":{"rendered":"Vinh Long: Meandering through the Mekong Delta"},"content":{"rendered":"

There isn’t much to see in the actual town of Vinh Long. The place serves almost entirely as a place to launch a boat to tour around the fabled waters of the ‘Nine Dragons’, the nine main rivers that make up the Mekong Delta<\/a>. We chose Vinh Long as an alternative to the larger and more popular town of Can Tho in an attempt to get off of the beaten track a bit. The only thing we were worried about was missing the floating markets around Can Tho, though we heard from other travelers (and saw from their pictures) that they weren’t really that great.<\/p>\n

We hired a tour from the guesthouse where we stayed. It left at 6 in the morning and included a random smattering of other tourists. It ended up being a pretty good experience. This is literally all we did here (besides struggle to find vegetarian food), so this will be a nice short post with lots of pretty pictures of boats on the water.<\/p>\n

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Kids playing with kites near the water in the warm evening air.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Small stall on the sidewalk.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Out on the water! I guess this guy is on an early morning commute.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A week’s supply of cocounts.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A heavy load. With baskets!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A couple doing their own commute.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Many of the boats had spaces on the back for washing dishes and\/or clothes. This says a lot about how important their boats are in their lives.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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They even have waterfront gas stations. We stopped by one to get filled up before we headed out.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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We never did find out what these ‘faces’ were on the fronts of all the boats. They sure looked cool.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Sunrise.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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People clambered across decks like they were on a sidewalk.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The ‘floating market’ was really just a couple groups of half-a-dozen boats tied together with stuff for sale. It wasn’t very impressive but still cool to see. The stuff tied to the stick are examples of what they sell. In this case, I think it’s sweet potatoes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Pineapples!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The area around Vinh Long is famous for a couple types of snack food. The first is puffed rice. Part of our tour was visiting the place they make it. It was fun to watch and we got samples afterwards.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The other food is a type of coconut candy. You see it everywhere, especially in places like airport gift shops. We saw them making that too and got even more samples =)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Another part of our tour was a ride on some boats piloted by some friendly ladies. It was very relaxing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Marisa trying out the classic straw hat look.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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View from our little boat with some locals on the left and our fellow tourists on the right.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Church on the edge of the water.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Homes on the water.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Vinh Long was nice but something of a disappointment. We were hoping for huge, expansive rice paddies dotted with strawhat-wearing farmers. I think our mistake was in not getting far enough into the countryside. No room for regrets, though. There’s always next time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There isn’t much to see in the actual town of Vinh Long. The place serves almost entirely as a place to launch a boat to tour around the fabled waters of the ‘Nine Dragons’, the nine main rivers that make up the Mekong Delta. We chose Vinh Long as an alternative to the larger and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,16,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-places","category-seasia","category-vietnam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/texandtia.com\/worldtrip\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}