I don't think I ever thought that i'd be in a rowboat in the Mekong

Mr. Hung picked us up at 8 a.m. to travel out of Saigon to the Mekong River. It’s about an hour and a half by car and he spent that time telling us about the area. It is 40,000 square kilometers and mostly flat. While it is a gamble to live and grow crops in the north of Vietnam because of typhoons, it is easy to do so in the Mekong Delta where it is possible to get three crop cycles in each year. 12 million tons of rice is exported from this region each year, and people also support themselves fishing primarily for catfish and tilapia and growing fruit. The river itself is very long; it wends through China, Tibet, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Its tributary in the city is the Saigon River and currently it has a lovely river walk. Mr. Hung says that 10 years ago the Japanese government financially assisted the Vietnamese with a cleanup of the river, evacuating the slums that had grown up around it and expanding the road along it. As a result, now there is only a small area of slums along the river toward the edge of the city.

It is currently monsoon season, though Mr. Hung says that is not what it is called in Vietnam. While the people along the Mekong River do experience flooding during this time of year, they call it instead “the floating season” and they appreciate the gifts the weather brings. There is a great respect for the flood: the waters clean, fertilize and promote growth.

There are several delicacies in the region and he forewarned us that if we saw Rice-Field Rabbit on a menu in the Delta, we should be aware that term is slang for rat, but we should also be aware that rice-field rats are quite different from city rats because they are clean, plump and have only ever eaten rice throughout their lives. He also told us snake wine takes like cognac despite being made by soaking a king cobra, cobra, rattlesnake, sidewinder and viper in rice water with herbs for 100 days. They call it Vietnamese Viagra because of the boost it is known to give men. Something Mr. Hung made clear throughout the day was that there is very little wasted in production here in Vietnam. Every part of the coconut has a use and a re-use. Every part of a grain of rice has a use and a re-use. The husks are used as cooking fuel and fertilizer. Almost every bit of land is purposed and repurposed as well. Rice farmers will often farm ducks because they can exist on the same plot of land and eat bugs and their dung fertilizes the ground making it a rich place for the rice to grow.

When encountering people near the Mekong, Mr. Hung says their first question is often “how old are you?” because this helps them know how to refer to you with respect. People who are older are called uncle or aunt and people who are the same age are called brother or sister. Up until about 10 years ago, the word for Russian was synonymous with the word for foreigner because Russians were the only visitors here. As a result sometimes now people will refer to tourists as Russians by accident.

Travel is an excellent teacher and so many of my assumptions are being challenged. Remembering how sick I felt on the six hour drive from Oaxaca City to the coast and how terrible the dirt roads were traveling from Antigua to Pana in Guatemala, I purchased Dramamine for this trip only to discover not only roads but nicely paved toll roads. Along those toll roads are rice farms and here and again we saw graves. Mr. Hung says that everyone in Saigon is cremated not because there isn’t an emphasis on ancestor worship but because there is no room for bodies; however, out in the country families often bury their dead at home in the garden where it is easy to tend to them.

When we arrived to the Mekong, Mr. Hung brought us on a boat across the river. As soon as we climbed on, he got out a machete and whacked away at coconuts so that first we could drink the water and then—whack, whack, whack again—we could scoop out the immature gelatinous coconut fruit from the inside.  While it was clear he had done the same thing many times before, it is disconcerting to have someone whack a machete blade at the floor of a rickety wooden boat that supports you. The river is brown now because it is the floating season but he said that it is typically a brilliant green. It has water hyacinth growing everywhere and is filled with both ferries and fishing boats. The vegetation is lush and we took the boat across the river to the island village of Ben Tre where we spent several hours on Dragon Island. First we wandered through coconut gardens and Mr. Hung showed us grapefruit trees, cocoa plants and lemon grass and the he brought us to an outdoor kitchen where a woman was making a coconut treat similar to a crepe that was delicious and another that hardens and is similar to a waffle cone in an American ice cream shop. We went on to what was essentially a jungle factory producing coconut candy, essentially a soft caramel made from coconut water and sugar. We also tasted coconut wine which is wine in name only and more like grain alcohol.

We rented bicycles and toured the villages of Quoi Son, Phu An Hoa and An Khanh that way. Later in life when people ask me “have you been to…” I might not know that I have because the names of these places are hard to anchor in my brain. The lanes on Dragon Island were narrow and we shared them with pedestrians, dogs, motorbikes and cars. Despite the fact that Mr. Hung was in the lead, often on his phone and he never once yielded to another vehicle, there were several moments I suspected would be my last as motorbikes zoomed past on my left and right. We stopped for sugarcane juice and saw how the cane was squeezed time and again until absolutely dry and we stopped to see a business that spun rope from the thread in coconut shells. It was lovely to see the homes in this part of the world and to see, much closer than we had while on the highway, graves in front gardens in the Vietnamese jungle. We ended our ride at small tea shop that served local seasonal fruits and there we tried rat hair fruit, dragon eye fruit, jackfruit, grapefruit and pineapple. Rat hair fruit is so called because it is a reddish brown color and has hairy tendrils around its outside and dragon eye fruit because when you suck the meat from the pit what is left looks like… a dragon’s eye. They’re rather literal in their naming of things here.

We left the bicycles at the tea shop and took a row boat along a water palm creek back to the river. That experience may just be the Christmas card picture this year, but who knows what the rest of this trip will hold. In some moments it has been hard to reckon our experience here with the settings we’ve been given by American films about the war, but on the boat on the creek, it was easy to imagine what it must have been like for American GIs here 40 years ago. At the same time, the reality of it was absolutely serene.

We transferred to the a bigger boat when we reached the river and had lunch on Phoenix Island (there are four: Tortoise, Phoenix, Dragon and Unicorn—I’m not sure if when they were named the Vietnamese people believed tortoises to be magical creatures or if they believed the phoenix, dragon and unicorn were real but there is an incongruity here in ttohe names). Lunch on Phoenix Island was unbelievable, as all of our meals have been. Mr. Hung didn’t eat with us, just deposited us at a table and left us in the hands of a waiter who brought course after course, each bigger than the last. The first thing he brought was a plate with a bamboo stand designed to hold an entire deep fried elephant ear fish upright so you can see all of its glory. It might be a little smaller than a football, but not much, and there is table service as the waiter soaks rice paper, then wraps cucumber, pineapple, and parts of the fish in it and I say parts because I don’t mean to suggest he filleted the fish. He just scraped skin and flesh and bones and all into it so: parts. It was delicious. The combination of the pineapple and cucumber was refreshing and clean tasting and the fish was a sharp contrast. Our second course was prawns with ground salt, chili of some sort and peanuts. The third was beef soup. The fourth was an omelet with shrimp and mushrooms. The fifth was sticky rice and something like tortilla chips but made from rice and sweetened. The people who know us know that we are good eaters. We’ll eat a lot of whatever we are given but we cannot keep up with the volume and frequency of these meals and all of the dishes that are served at each one of them. I feel guilty leaving so much behind on every meal table, but I haven’t been hungry since we boarded the plane.

After lunch, we took the boat back to the other side of the river and drove back to Saigon. Along the way, we listened to Mr. Hung as he told stories and answered our questions. We asked about the poor in Vietnam and how veterans are treated. They do have very poor people, he told us, and they collect in shanty towns along the rivers in Vietnam because there is constant access to food in those areas. The Buddhists organize a volunteer corps of teachers to try to improve the lifestyles of these people and some avail themselves of the opportunity and others do not. The volunteer teachers also work with veterans and there are vocational centers specifically for vets to attend for job training and they are given priority when it comes to job placement.

While education is free in Vietnam, Mr. Hung indicated that the national budget for education is very small so class sizes are big (50 students to a class) and parents are asked to pay a great deal of money each year, sometimes monthly and there are special assessments if the school needs a new copier or air conditioning. All too familiar. He said that hospitals are also overloaded and sometimes there are two patients for every bed. If a patient agrees to pay cash for their medical care, they receive more immediate attention. Mr. Hung’s wife cooks food for indigent patients.

The last question I asked Mr. Hung before we parted ways was to let me know what I could tell my students about American involvement in the war. He told us that propaganda throughout the Communist Party was dense about “American henchmen” having invaded the country but to expand his answer he gave us a short history lesson about the relationship between the two countries dating back to WW2 when Japan invaded and occupied Vietnam and the loss of life was catastrophic, so when American pilots were shot down Ho Chi Minh delivered them to the Chinese government instead of the Japanese. He also indicated that the first of Ho Chi Minh’s armies was trained by the OSS. Ultimately, he believes that the South Vietnamese would always be grateful that the Americans came to their side in the war against the north when it seemed no one else would.

We said our goodbyes to Mr. Hung late in the day—he was a dear and wonderful tour guide and I would recommend his services to anyone traveling in this part of the world--and we waited in the coffee shop at our hotel for another visit from Mrs. Chi so we could complete the payment for this tour. Afterwards, we walked around the neighborhood, braving crossing the street for the first time without Mr. Hung, Mrs. Chi or Mr. Hao by our sides and wandered through the night market. Every evening in this neighborhood people set up tents and sell all manner of goods in the street. Markets are surprisingly similar from Panajachel to Merida to Saigon, but there is an electricity and energy to the market being held at night and in the middle of a major metropolitan area and in a street that is not closed to through traffic. The rains came and people bustled to cover their wares with plastic tarps and we headed back to our hotel to get some sleep in preparation for our flight to Buon Ma Thuoc the next morning. Who knew there was an airport in Buon Ma Thuoc? Who knew there was a place called Buon Ma Thuoc?