Carleen's travel blog: Last Day on the Boat

Morning was spent in Ben Tre, first arriving by sampan, then walking through the village where they grow all kinds of fruit: coconuts, cocoa, jack fruit, mangos, tamarind, papaya. We then loaded into a horse cart for a ride to a restaurant where we were served sweet tea flavored with kumquats and were serenaded by a VIetnamese group playing the 2 string banjo, guitar and one string zither accompanied by several singers. They sang a few traditional songs and ended with Auld Lang Sine in Vietnamese. We then boarded small sampans (2-3 people each) rowed by a woman standing up in the stern, much like a paddle boarder. The river was lined with water palms. Then it was on to the coconut candy factory. A woman there husks the coconuts by hand, then feeds the meat into a machine that pulverizes it, another that mixes it into a paste, then another that adds flavor. The result is hand pressed into forms, cut into lengths and hand wrapped. The result is delicious, especially the ginger banana one. They were also selling some kind of rice based moonshine with a cobra in the bottle. I could have bought small souvenir bottles with tiny cobra, but I don’t know anyone I dislike enough to give that to.
The afternoon on the boat included a visit to the wheelhouse and kitchen as well as being part of the parade of ships into Ho Chi Minh City. Quite a change from the Cambodian Mekong. The crew came out to give their goodbyes and sang and danced traditional Cambodian songs, then invited us to

dance with them. You haven’t lived until you have done the twist with the 20 year old Cambodian kitchen staff! Disembarkation in the AM.