The Quiet Life in Sadec
After a couple days exploring Vinh Long and An Binh, we took a bus further inland until reaching Sadec, a small city in the Mekong Delta with a wonderfully tranquil pace.
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A Delta Tour around An Binh
It’s unavoidable. If you plan on spending any time on the Mekong Delta, you’re going to be taking a boat trip. Who visits the Mekong and doesn’t take a boat trip? And it’s just as unavoidable that, unless you’re willing to invest a lot of money, your trip will be pretty touristy. But that doesn’t mean it can’t also be fun.
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The Island of An Binh
For our initial excursion to the Mekong Delta, we choose to stay on An Binh, an island between the towns of Vinh Long and Cai Be. We spent the first day of our trip biking around the island, and photographing its postcard-worthy images of life on the delta.
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Shopping at the Local Market
In our neighborhood, there aren’t many supermarkets. Even that’s an overstatement; there actually isn’t a single supermarket anywhere near us. So we’ve had to become familiar the local market, or “chợ”. And the market’s vendors have had to become familiar with us. Trust is a two-way street, people… and Saigon’s markets are worlds unto themselves.
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Saigon Street Food Journal #2
As we knew it would, eating has become a major highlight of our time in Saigon. We’ve been sticking almost entirely to street food, and have loved just about every dish we’ve had. Here’s another selection of some of our favorites.
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A Day in Cholon
Every city worth its salt has a Chinatown, but the award for World’s Largest Chinatown (at least in terms of area) goes to Cholon in Ho Chi Minh City. This district was actually its own city for a long time, until eventually being swallowed up by its bigger neighbor to the east. We spent a day navigating its busy streets and visiting its markets.
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The Cu Chi Tunnels
During the Vietnam War (fine: the “War of American Aggression”), the Viet Cong were hopelessly outmatched from a military standpoint. So, they had to level the playing field… or even better, dig tunnels and hide underneath the playing field. We went to Cu Chi to visit one of the most famous underground systems.
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The Great Divine Temple of Cao Dai
The city of Tay Ninh is probably known best as the birthplace of Caodaism, a modern religion which has millions of adherents in Vietnam and around the world. We were able to attend a bizarre and beautiful worship ceremony in Cao Dai’s Holy See, at the Great Divine Temple.
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