Poor old hens

Sunday 22 December

The trip started slightly inauspiciously as we ground to a halt on the highway out of HCM City and the driver rushed round to the back of the coach with his rather rudimentary toolbox. Apparently the air conditioning wasn’t working properly. Gradually people wandered off the coach to have cigarettes or look at the driver doing his work. 

Thankfully, with the help of some tape, the job was done after half an hour and we set off again. We had the usual retail opportunity break and carried on down the busy, garbage lined, road which gradually afforded more opportunities for rural views, until we arrived at our destination Cai Be. This town is on the Mekong and one is struck immediately by the vastness of the river. At times it’s like being on a lake.

We boarded a tourist boat to look at the floating market. This was for me very interesting. It comprises boats that have come to Cai Be, to sell their products wholesale. The owner puts an example of what is for sale (e.g., a pineapple) on a bamboo. 

Then we went on to a place where they produced various products like rice wine and Royal Jelly, affording another chance to buy souvenirs. 

We carried on up the Mekong before turning into one of the tributaries. It was low tide and the water levels were pretty shallow. We transferred into rowing boats, four to a boat plus the rower and went for a peaceful twenty minutes up the tributary until we arrived at the place for lunch. The restaurant was in a ‘home stay’ a short walk away.

With my slightly mutinnous stomach, I decided it prudent to skip lunch and went for a wander. The area seemed to consist of a vast network of smallholdings and gave me some clearer idea of the Mekong. The delta is home to around 20 million people.

We all then proceeded up the road to rejoin the larger Mekong transport boat that took us up to Vinh Long where we disembarked and walked through the large market. The varieties of rice in the market are amazing, each with its own price reflecting its place in the rice pecking order. Rather sadder were the poor old chickens, lying resigned with their feet tied tightly together. However even at that stage it’s probably a better life than our battery hens have and one must be careful not to anthropomorphise and attribute death row feelings to them.

The drive back was predictably tedious, punctuated by a real emergency stop caused by a crazy young man dashing across the three lane highway. He must have been within an inch of being hit and potentially a gonner. If I heard him right the tour guide said there are 27 deaths a day on the roads. That’s not in the least surprising and I kept looking at the families with little children on their scooters, struck by their extreme vulnerability.