It's so inexpensive here, we can't afford to go home!

When we settled our account this morning at the Oasis, we discovered that the 8 beers, 2 pizzas with delivery and 14 pounds of laundry we had done cost a whopping $14.  Everything is so inexpensive, we can't afford to come back home.

After a good western style breakfast, we caught a boat from the Oasis' jetty to Mo Cay, the district across the river that was a VC haven when I was here last. I watched the only B-52 strike I saw from the Ben Tre side of the river in 1972 before crossing with a South Vietnamese infantry unit to sweep the area.  In fact, that may have been the last time I visited the district.

Today's lesson in agronomy foccussed on coconuts.  Ben Tre is known in Vietnam as the "Coconut Kingdom."  Coconut processing has increased tremendously since the war and employs a lot of workers as it appears to be very labor intensive.  After debarking from our boat, we took bicycles down a country lane, stopping at various workshops along the way.  The first was at an older woman's small home, which she shares with her son and his family.  She spins coir into string for a couple of dollars a day to add a little money to the family budget.

Our next stops were at a couple of workshops that broke the coconut husks into coir and dried the fibers.  The stuff is ubiquitous - in everything from car seats to welcome mats.  The Vietnamese sell most of their output to China.

Next, we visited a workshop where the workers husk the coconuts with razor sharp spear-pointed stakes in the shop floor.  A good worker like the guy giving us the high sign in the photo can make about $20 a day, which must be enough to live on, since his co-workers were quick to point out that he has 15 children.

At the next shop, the workers open the coconuts and take out the meat.

After drying the meat for a few days, it is put into a press, which extracts the oil and leaves a dried meal that is fed to animals.  The shells are baked into charcoal and the highest quality shell are used to make activated charcoal for filtration systems.  Nothing goes to waste.

The canals are full of workboats hauling coconuts, fertilizer, building materials, reclaimed silt to add to farm fields, and coconut products. 

An overview of what the people in Ben Tre do for their livelihoods like the one we have had the last two days would have been enormously valuable to me 40 years ago.  I might have had a better appreciation for just how disruptive such tactics as defoliating coconut groves would be to families who depend on the trees to make a living.

We left our bikes at the MoCay marketplace and got back on the van for the hour and a half drive through a torrential rainstorm to Can Tho, the administrative seat of the Mekong Delta region,  We're in another nice hotel tonight and turing in early so we can get up to visit the floating market on the Bassac River in the morning.

Thanh, gave us another great tip for a restaurant in the market on the riverfront and suggested we visit the night market.  Because the Vietnamese often live 3 or 4 generation in a small house, there is little privacy and young people spend lots of time socializing outdoors or at restaurants and karaoke clubs to get out of the house.  They were certainly out in force tonight!