As the second day started and my aftermath of Snake Wine faded, a 6am start was in the taking, our tour was taking us to a floating market, a market based on trade but all on boats, so we got to our boat, a nice boat.

The trip took us about 30 min down the river stream until you can see in the horizon a blur view of “RUSH NEW YORK HOUR” type in the middle of a huge river full of boats, as we approached in, the first boat hit our side and I could see how the boats in motion were anchored together to sell us “the tourists some fruit and COFFEE” they had on a small boat a thermos of hot coffee and tea, crazy, some of us diged in , not me cause I still had Snake Wine aftermath, so better take it with caution, after I had some items to eat. As we went across the river.

But let me represent some pictures that describe what I saw.

 

So as you can see it’s literally boats in the middle of the river doing big time trade, they come from far far away from several regions to trade for goods to carry back. But the real reason they still exist as i was told, Is that today a days, a floating market is a market where goods are sold from boats. Originating in times and places where water transport played an important role in daily life, most floating markets operating today mainly serve as tourist attractions.

And of course I am a tourist so I was treated very well. They even invited us to have a very unique way of eating pineapple, so we got of our boat and went directly into another man’s boat to get some and check it out.

It’s like eating an ice cream but way more healthy, check me out with our pineapple chef.

So life is beautiful, and so is our journey down the river, next stop a rice noodle place where we were going to be taught on how rice noodles are created. The first thing I can say is it looks way easier than what it actually is, the team and me went to this interesting place, and of course no SNAKE WINE thank god, but i came later to know there is actually a snake heart shot, something very common in this area, i will preserve that story for later. So lets proceed to the noodles.

The noodle process is all based on big big oven were they poor the rice into and create a paste of rice, that is later spread on a very hot round table, as you can see I of course gave it a try.

The noodles were lots of fun, interesting how much of these they actually do a day, so our journey in the shop continued and they gave us a taste of Noodle PIZZA… and all I can say is what a marketing STUNT nothing to do with pizza but the product tasted good. In the same place i bought some wood chop sticks, and there were many many many bottle openers with the shape of a mans genitals, “WHAT IN THE WORLD” i can’t image me opening a Bud with that. But i guess people actually buys them.

Well it was time to head home from the Mekong region, on a bus for the next 4hrs or something, you see I could never tell what was the right time cause our guide kept saying 3 hrs and it was more like 2 and he said 1 hr and it was more like 2.5 so his watch for sure it was different than mine.

All I can say is that he did stop in a very nice place were a movie L’amant was filmed and one of my most favorite pictures was taken in this very special place.

I mean you see what a nice house but at the same time, 14 persons plus the staff from ABV all from different places, no prior back ground all united and getting along its amazing to see how we humans can adapt and enjoy times with strangers that today i consider more and more my friends, hope they feel the same way, but we will never know for sure.

So until next adventures in the next few weeks might take me and the team and, will keep you all posted.  And until soon

Cheers Luis….