Hello! Hello! Hello! and a trip to the "beach" at the end of the world

Thanh, our guide, picked us up from the hotel at 8:30 on Friday to start our trip to the Mekong Delta. The drive to Ben Tre took about an hour and a half on a four-lane expressway. The farther from the city we got, the more familiar the countryside looked.  We stopped briefly at a Cao Dai church in My Tho. 

We caught a boat from the quay in Ben Tre and cruised up the Ben Tre River and into ever smaller canals.  

We docked at a brick workshop for a few minutes and looked at the manufacturing process. The government has directed that traditional brick-making cease in the delta, because the process uses too much clay necessary to keep the rice and fruit growing areas high enough to avoid inundation.

Next we took a smaller rowed sampan to a workshop where the family was making coconut candy and other coconut products.  Like almost everything else in Vietnam, the manufacturing process uses every part of the raw material - the fiber is used for coir, the shells are made into charcoal and, of course the milk and meat is used for food and oil. The last stop was at a mat weaving workshop, where we picked up a mat for a gift.

Lunch was another huge spread.

When we got back to town, we toured the province war museum, which is located in the former province chief's house. It's the only building in town that I remember.  The site of our province team house has been leveled to make way for a new Australian-Vietnam hotel.

We checked into our hotel, The Oasis, a small place across the river from the center of town,owned by a New Zealander and his Vietnamese wife.  He was hosting a family reunion of sorts. One of his "mates" is a Kiwi Vietnam veteran.  Ken, the proprietor, seems to know everyone in town.  One of his Vietnamese friends has contacts on the provincial committee and specializes in helping to locate former South Vietnamese army officers.  I gave him the name of my counterpart.  We'll see what turns up. I doubt Major Si stayed around Ben Tre.  His family didn't live here and he was a transplanted Northerner.

We walked to dinner (a long long way) at a restaurant where no one spoke English, had a great meal and then walked back through town to see the night market.

On the way home, every time we passed a house with small kids, the children would yell hello, hello, hello!  At one house where a bunch of kids were playing outside, when Kathy walked by all of the kids started hollering hello, hello, in some cases urged on by their parents, and then the children came running up to pat her on the back.  We walked up the street  that way like a couple of western pied pipers for a block or so before the parents reclaimed their young ones.

Saturday morning we took off for Ba Tri District where I lived when I first arrived in Vietnam.  The countryside looks familiar, but more built up and heavily populated.  We stopped briefly at the Ba Tri market before driving to An Thuy village.

When I was here before, the Vietnamese navy had a small installation in the town surrounded by a few small fishing boats.  The navy base is now a border police station and the small fishing village has turned into a large processing area serving a good-sized offshore fishing fleet.  We saw more fresh calamari, octopus, and fish than I think I've ever seen in one place.

After asking a number of old-timers for directions to Con Ho, the site of my little training base, we concluded that it had probably blown away in a storm years ago, since it was mostly thatched huts.  Instead we found a narrow road leading to the "beach," and drove to the water's edge.  The seaside at the mouth of the Mekong is a mud flat several hundred yards wide at low tide and the river is over a mile wide at the mouth.  

We noticed a watchtower on the mudflat and went to investigate,  Thanh intoduced us to the "clam patrol," which mans the post.  We climbed up into the building  and spent an interesting 30 minutes talking to the watchmen.  They obviously don't get a lot of visitors, especially westerners.  They, together with a couple of boats in the river, are employed by the government to guard a rich government-owned clam bed from poachers.  The private beach owners similarly employ watchmen to protect the beds.  Occasionally, local residents will descend in such numbers on the beds to rake up clams that the watchmen can't stop them.

After bidding the clam police farewell, we returned to the hotel for a beer and a short rest, before setting out on a bicycle ride through the countryside to the house of an antique collector and historian of local customs and ceremonies.  His ancestors include the mandarin who served as the province chief in the 19th century.  Mr Tranh was a thoroughly charming host.  He was a former officer in the Southern army and spent 3 years in a reeducation camp.  His past hasn't kept the government from hiring him a consultant of ancient rituals and ceremonies. His children don't share his passion for antiques or history and he is looking for someone to whom he can pass on his knowledge, lest the old ceremonies die out.

The bicycle ride back to town was a hair-raising trip on narrow concrete lanes, over even narrower bridges, fighting for room with a constant stream of motorbikes.  once we got back to the city, things got worse as we tried to navigate a couple of large roundabouts clogged with cars, trucks, motorbike and bicycles, with no traffic contol, whatsoever.  We pedaled to a Catholic church on the river, attended mass and then ditched the bikes and took the van back to the hotel.

We were blitzed enough when we arrive that we decided to order pizza.  They turned out to be quite good.  I don't know why I should be surprised - everything else we've eaten here has been great.