I’m on a Boat!
Or, two days ago I was on a boat. Sorry for the late post, the transition of going from delta/jungle to crazy city took a minute to get settled.
On my last day at Sunny Farm, Sam surprised Anna and I with a boat ride through the the Mekong Delta. The delta is a water highway for many people who do commerce on it and for many it is a floating home. There are whole “towns” or communities that live afloat together on the delta. It was a very surreal experience being on a boat in this environment. The best I can describe is at times it looked like being in every Vietnam war movie I have ever seen as so much of the Hollywood depiction of the war was in the jungles of the Mekong delta. It was a little strange and sad as it is hard not to imagine all that took place in this area in the late 60s early 70s.
So basically, we boarded the boat about 30 feet from my “house” I showed you in an earlier post. I had no idea that outside the gate was one of the on ramps to the “super highway” to the larger delta. See some images below of our departure.



The wooden boats that people use to navigate the river are amazing. They are very long, and low profile as the bridges they go under are very low. The majority of them are unpainted, but oiled or laquered but they do have “eyes” in the front to watch for traffic (easier to see it coming). See below.




I look like such a dork.
There were ferrys that transported cars, people, motor bikes, you name it.


Sam had us navigate into a mangrove “off ramp” as he wanted to get some water coconut. This is like no coconut I have ever seen. It only grows in the water and the coconuts look like you might hang on a tropical-themed Christmas Tree…except that they weight a gazillion pounds as they are mostly made up of woody pods that contain small amounts of coconut water. See below.




Now I will show you a picture of our captain hacking one down and more importantly, the 2" rim of our boats that he walks on to get back and forth. Seriously, it was crazy watching him balance on one side of the boat like he was walking on flat earth! See below.


On the way back we drove through a thick cluster of water hyacinth and harvested a bunch to bring back and grow in the farm waterways. They provide valuable green food for pigs, rabbits, bull, pretty much everyone loves them! Their roots look like wet feathers, really cool.




Below are a couple more images from the day. It was memorable and awesome.



