Mekong Delta on first day of 2012

Mekong river connects Vietnam, China, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Tibet. It is the 7th longest river in asia and 10th longest river in the world.

Today's main part of the tour is to see the floating wholesale market. According to the guide, the whole seller ferry their goods on the boat and usually live in the boat for up to weeks even they have a house on mainland. Reason is because, they have to travel far to sell off the goods on their boat.

We did not see much trading going on, and floating market is also less busy as before ever since roads had been improved to these areas to transport goods. Transporting by land is much fasting than by water.

See all the tall anntenas 

Later the boat dropped us off to visit the standard tourist spot, to buy things as usual.. nothing special

Wine

An interesting way to keep the teapot warm

Coconut candy

Making some traditional rice skin

 'popping' rice

 I always love taking boats. So I enjoyed sitting on the boat, traveling along the Mekong Delta and looking at boats curry tons and tons of cabbages, pineapples, watermelons, tapioca, etc.

I can see from the face of the people there, they are all working hard to earn a living, traveling away from home and under the hot sun, keep on moving around in order to earn a living for the family.

This really makes me feel how fortunate we are here in Singapore.

旅行的意义

旅行对不同人有着不同的意义。旅行，不一定要逛便所有的景点，不一定是去的地方越多就越值得。有时花时间静静的，慵懒的，坐在 cafe,往着这异国的街道，也何尝不是旅行的一种？

Ho Chi Minh - 胡志敏

Last trip of 2011 and first of 2012.

My first impression of Ho Chi Minh City is crazy traffic and heavily polluted air (from motorcycles), you have to be vigilant when crossing the road, continuously looking out to oncoming vehicles and estimate the speed and distance between you and the vehicle to be able to cross. 

Vietnamese seems to enjoy playing badminton and this particular game that is similar to "chapteh". We saw groups and groups of them, young and old enjoying the games in the open square.

Men carrying huge bunch of balloons is also a common site. At some time i was also tempted to get one =D

The central district seems just like any other vibrant cities with nice tall shopping centers and office building. Many still have beautiful Christmas decoration on. It also seems like they are going to have a big countdown party as well.

 I am not very adventurous with food so i did not try the famous traditional Vietnamese French bread with vege, ham, mayo, etc. I would think they looks like Subway. Vietnamese ate them mostly for breakfast and you can find them anywhere in the streets. Those we ate it before told me it really taste delicious. For me, I don't really like bread in the first place so... i did not try..

Basically Vietnamese food are quite alright, similar to Chinese, they have all sorts of noodles soup and fried rice etc, and many kinds of spring rolls. I especially like the chicken wings. It's like marinated with some special spices that makes the chicken taste so fragrance.

One of those stall selling the French Bread sandwich

The yummy chicken wings