An overnight cruise on the Mekong Delta allowed us to better understand the life of the area’s citizens. The rivers feeding the Mekong Delta start in Nepal and by the time it reaches southern Vietnam, the rivers & tributaries are wide and brown.  It is clearly  an important commercial waterway.  The rivers are filled with large & small barges, ships & boats.  The floating market near Can Tho, is a vibrant market of farmers, wholesalers & small distributors.  Fruits, vegetables & meats are all available.  Each boat has a pole with an example of the products that it is selling attached.  Some boats only sell minimums (example – 100 kg of watermelons), others will sell any amount.  Small boats collect their produce and chug upstream to sell in their village or supply their restaurant.

Noodles are an important food staple.  The hand-made noodle factory we visited produced 400 kg (sales price $1 per kg) of noodles daily for local sales.  Other than the motorized mixer & cutter, all of the work is by hand.  Rice husks are burned to produce steam which cooks the round pancake-like flat dough.  The thin disks are sun-dried on bamboo mats, then cut into strips.  The employees work from 4 am to 2 pm daily in a very hot environment for $150 a month – about 50 cents per hour.  Clearly machines produce the instant noodles for substantially less costs, but these noodles are organic and are more-prized among families.

After a night in Chau Doc, we are heading by boat to Phnom Penh.