Asia 2018: Day #23 Final Day on the Boat

A small launch took us to the Vietnamese town of Sa Dec on the Mekong Delta where we would be visiting another local market. Our guide must have realised by this time that we were all pretty much over the concept of market visits and devised a plan to make the visit a bit more interesting.  He split us into two groups of seven, gave us some small amounts of Vietnamese dong and set us the task of buying four items, the names of which he only provided in Vietnamese. I originally thought this would be a disaster but it turned out really well as each group had to struggle to be understood in their lousy Vietnamese and to bargain for goods at the same time.

About 45 minutes later we got back together and came to the conclusion that each group had purchased a grand total of one item correctly. The major problem had been in our pronunciation. Vietnamese is a very nuanced tonal language with words for very different objects sounding very similar to our Western ears.  The market stall holders and some of the security personnel had a great laugh at our expense. It was good to see that everyone took it all in fun and it made a simple market visit quite memorable.

This was followed immediately by a visit to "The House of the Lover". This house was owned by Huynh Thuy Le who was the Vietnamese lover of Marguerite Duras (French novelist and script-writer) when she was a teenager and he was about 30.

And then another temple, though a slightly different one. Caodaism is a Vietnamese mixture of Hinduism, Buddhism and Catholicism and made for a very colourful temple indeed.

After lunch we visited the small town of Cai Be and a small family owned business that makes rice paper, pop rice and rice candies.

Farewell cocktails and the presentation of the crew marked our last full day on the boat. Saigon in the morning.