Still at sea on our way to Da Nang. Yesterday’s tour left at 7 am and began with a 3 hour bus ride to Cai Be on the Mekong River. On the way we saw miles of rural Vietnam and many small towns. Here life was clearly much harder. Many of the roads were four lanes with tolls, and they were crowded with trucks and buses. But the rural roads were two lane and the villages lined with all manner of shops, mostly small with some cooking going on in front. We passed through one set of villages where there were many huge warehouses of sacks which I took to be mostly rice. We passed many rice and fruit farms.
We left the bus and got on a small boat - a long narrow wooden vessel with an inboard engine - and set off for a cruise on the Meykong. The river was busy with all manner of working barge-like wooden boats carrying eveything from rice to gravel to logs. We passed long lines of fish farms floating on the river - we could see the young red snapper swimming around in the pens.
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Fish Farming
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We stopped at a candy factory where they make a toffee-like candy from coconut oil and sugar and a slightly sweet puffed rice snack sold in little rectangles the size of a small candy bar. All the work is done by hand with the packing performed by young girls. We sampled the rice cakes and candies - they were excellent. We were told that it was a very successful family business.
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| Packaging |
They also sold some exotic jarred creatures. Guess what is in these jars.
