Current location at 2315 ship time...
Latitude: 12 degrees 53.0' N
Longitude: 109 degrees 59.4' E
Course: 20 degrees
We are advancing clocks one hour tonight so we will be 12 hours ahead of EDT, 13 hours ahead of CDT, 14 hours ahead of MDT, and 15 hours ahead of PDT.
We continued to enjoy our time in Vietnam, and I did go to the Mekong River Delta http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mekong_River_Delta on Wednesday. About 80 of us left Ho Chi Minh City by bus at 8:00am and it was already very hot and humid. We encountered the same heavy traffic as we traveled south of the city for two hours. We headed through Lang An Province http://www.wompom.ca/vietnam/vnprovinc808.htm and stopped about an hour into the trip at Ben Luc district to visit a Cao Dai Temple and a local market. Cao Dai http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cao_Dai is a relatively new religion, established in 1926. The Cao Dai temples look very similar to one another and are quite beautiful. The nearby market was very busy and full of colorful fruits and vegetables, but we had to walk quickly through the fish and meat on such a hot day. I had to laugh at the number of students who decided they would be vegetarians for lunch when our guide took a count right after the visit to the market!
We drove into Tien Giang Province http://www.wompom.ca/vietnam/vnprovinc810.htm and on to the city of My Tho. There we boarded covered wooden boats to tour the Mekong River and the four islands in the center of it: Tan Long (Dragon), Quy (Tortoise), Phung (Phoenix), and Thoi Son (Unicorn). The Mekong River begins in Tibet and flows through China, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia before entering Vietnam, forming the delta and emptying into the South China Sea. The Delta area is beautiful with palm and tropical fruit trees. We left the covered boats and had an opportunity to sample the fruits from the area -- jack fruit, pineapple, mango, grapefruit and others. We then moved into canoe type boats that were paddled by local island dwellers through some of the canals that flow through the delta. The channel where we entered our boat was very narrow and muddy at low tide, and I was reminded of Humphrey Bogart pulling the African Queen along -- I didn't think we'd ever get out of there! Fortunately our rowers (one pictured above) had more experience than I had confidence. The heat was sweltering, so it was a relief when we finally got along the channel enough to get a nice breeze. We did see many of the places where the river people live up on the banks. It's not surprising that the main occupation in this fertile area is agriculture, and that it is a big rice producing area.
We had a very nice lunch featuring local cuisine -- lots of rice, vegetables and fish, then went to other boats to continue the tour of the area. We visited a place where they make coconut candy from the water coconuts in the area and had an opportunity to shop before returning to the buses for the ride back to the ship.
We had thought we were leaving Vietnam last night, not realizing that we had to wait for high tide in order to make the long trip back down the Saigon River and back to the South China Sea. We left this morning at 6:00am and should arrive in Hong Kong day after tomorrow on Sunday morning. Happy Birthday, Martha!
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