Vinh Long Island "The Most Relaxing Place on Earth"

Nick takes the wheel of the riverboat during our tour of river life

Picture a gentle breeze just strong enough to sway a hammock and blow the heat away. The roads are too narrow for cars so it's quiet. It's warm and sunny but you are in the shade of tropical trees. It's like a sleepy paradise on the river island of Vinh Long in the Mekong delta. A few hours after our arrival Justin christened it "The most relaxing place on earth."

We were on Vinh Long for 3 days. It served as an intermission between the big cities of Can Tho and Ho Chi Minh. Michele had booked a home stay with great food, other guests and more than enough hammocks to go around. It also had free bikes that you could borrow for a ride around the island. On our first day on Vinh Long Mom, Nick and I went on a ride in the morning, before it got to hot. Like I mentioned earlier- the roads are quite cramped, about the width of a sidewalk. This would be ok if they didn't drop off 3 or so feet on each side and it was only bikers and pedestrians on the concrete path. In fact this was not the case and there was heavy motorbike traffic. Groups of 5 or more motorcyclists would zoom by, beeping loudly if we didn't put our back tire a hairs breadth from the edge. It was pretty nerve wracking! I'm not really sure where all of these people were going either. We got a little turned around and accidentally went down a dead end road only to encounter hordes of oncoming traffic. It probably took us twice as long as it should have to get back to our home stay.
That was the last time we went biking.

We did a lot of homeschooling during our time there. There wasn't much else to do, that was the point of our visit.

One day however, we did take a long tour of some cottage industries of the delta. Most of the six hours were spent in the boat looking out at life on the Mekong. We visited a farm where medicinal mushrooms and honey products were produced. The mushrooms were grown in a shady greenhouse in paper wrapped parcels with the nutrients they needed. Then they were harvested to be used in teas. 

We walked through a flower garden to get to the bees. I'm not sure if sure if the hive we saw was a token tourist attraction or not. We saw other light blue boxes around, identical to the one we saw but it's possible they were empty and the real production was elsewhere. Without smoke or netting or anything, the lady showing us around slid out a section of the hive. We were hesitant to get any closer despite her encouragement. Where we come from, you don't go up to bee hives and walk away unscathed. 

"Don't worry- Friendly bees."

We all laughed nervously.
Nick and I each held part of the hive but quickly gave it back.

We walked back to the main building to sample Lotus tea with farm pollen and honey. It was pretty good and while we drank it we snacked on banana chips and candied ginger. We ended up buying both of those products for snacks later on and some honey too. 

We also took a paddle boat ride through canals that often slice through what dry land there is. Our tour guide/boat driver thus far handed us off to a middle aged women who took us on a nice cruise to give us another look at river culture. We also got to try on those classic Vietnamese non la hats too. 

Our last stop was a candy shop/snake winery/ rice paper manufacturer.

We didn't hear much about the rice paper but we did get to sample a lot of the tasty products, see the coconut cream press and watch puffed rice puff. Michele had always wondered how that stuff was made and now she knew.

Snake liqueur was also for sale. Ranging from tiny perfume sized bottles with newborn serpents to vast jugs with full grown boas coiled up, for less than 70$ a large dead snake with a scorpion in it's mouth could be all yours.

There was a small pond at our home stay stocked with the largest catfish you've ever seen. The owners gave us some simple bamboo poles and leftover shrimp to use as bait and Nick and I went to see if we could catch something. We didn't have any bites at first, so we propped up our poles and went to play soccer with the siblings who lived at the home stay. Our game was interrupted by Justin yelling something about a fish and a pole and how we better get over here right now! The five of us kids rushed over to the ponds edge where the water was being frothed by an immense fish- about 2 feet in length! It took everyone's strength to keep the pole out of the water, but we didn't have the power to get the monster on land. The bamboo pole which was rigid by human standards resembled a candy cane now. Other guests all over the compound were watching or filming the whole episode. After about 2 minutes of yelling and sweating and overall chaos the catfish unhooked himself an lived to swim another day.