Mekong and Markets

One of the larger branches of the mighty Mekong river

It's been a while but there has always been one last part of my trip through Vietnam that I wanted to write about. 

The final leg of our journey was in the south of the country, basing ourselves in Ho Chi Minh City we went on a two day trip to the Mekong Delta. Known as the rice bowl of Vietnam this is a very fertile region, as most deltas are, the river having brought rich soils and other detritus along for the ride from higher ground. After more than 3,000 miles of meandering from Tibet down through south east Asia this mighty river, the 10th longest on the planet, fans out over 15,000 sq miles of the country (see this image from NASA).

Once you stray into the tributaries this is how the Mekong looks. For miles. Endlessly.

This is one of those environments where the people that make it their home live almost semi-aquatic lives; there is no escaping the river. It impacts every aspect of their being. Pieces of actual solid ground are few and far between, especially nearer the coast. Raising your family, your livestock or your crops presents even more challenges than normal. People don't have cars here, they have boats; they don't go for a walk, they go for a swim. They say there is a period of the year when it doesn't rain quite so heavily as at others, but this river never dries. Picture vast islands of bamboo growing straight out of the water and you'll have a good idea of how much of this landscape looks.

If you look through the little windows you can see that this boat is stuffed to the gills with cabbages

What land there is has been aggressively cultivated in the last two decades as the Government sought to change Vietnam's status from a net importer to an exporter of rice, and it worked. Every bit of solid ground I saw either had a building on it or a paddy field thus highlighting the age old struggle between man and his environment. Less people in Vietnam now go hungry than they used to, but the Mekong has suffered and is not as large or diverse an ecosystem as it once was. Where the correct balance is on this scale of survival I couldn't say. It's easy to argue that this ecosystem should be protected from man at all costs but I'm pretty sure I'd strangle a panda with a tiger's tail if it meant my children wouldn't starve.

A slow day at the market

This aggressive agriculturalisation of the landscape has led to an influx of people from across the land. Historically the Greater Mekong region of South East Asia has been one of net emigration as a large population has had to do battle over very few jobs. In recent years though, the region has become one of net immigration as the demand for labour has increased. As the population has increased so the demand on local resources has seen a commensurate rise; in a land as fertile as the Mekong perhaps this doesn't seem like such a bad deal; the land is very fertile and can support many. But if there's one thing that we humans excel at it's finding ways to ruin a good thing. The laws of entropy are fairly unbending on this one, ultimately something will have to give.

Eels for dinner, anyone?

On the upside, one thing that all these people bring with them is their culture. Traditionally the hub of any town is it's market place in the town square. But what if the place you live doesn't have enough land to put a town square on? Easy, simply make your market float, of course. If you visit the Mekong then you won't have to wait long until you see one of their impressive floating markets; it seems that everyone just turns up with a boat load of produce, they tie a few examples of said produce to a big, vertical stick so that you can see what's being sold at a glance and then they just float around each other bargaining goods like traders the world over.

This woman pumps air into the bowl to keep her crayfish type creatures alive

Can Tho is one of the very few, what we would call, proper cities in the Mekong; it has a large freshwater port and is the major mercantile centre of the region. The large market that the town plays host to has been covered over in recent years to make it a bit more tourist friendly and it's well worth a look. Asides from all the exotic fruits like lychees (which I could do without) and dragon fruit (which is delicious) they have a good stock of live animals that you can buy fresh for a bit of home slaughtering.

That's a lot of lychees

It's difficult to imagine a river delta that just goes on for so long. I guess the closest thing we have to it in this country is the Fenlands; the unending flatness, the constantly waterlogged ground and ever present risk of flood. One of the things that I most remember the area for is that I finally got to eat some snake, snake curry to be precise. It was quite tasty, it sort of has the texture of pigs liver but a taste nearer to that of kidney. I recommend it.

My last photo here is one I have included because Sue really likes it. It's of her as she walks through the market of Can Tho. It has a nice simplicity to it but generally leaves me feeling sombre. Where is she walking? Why is she alone? As I took the photo I know that she was just trying to catch up to Eleanor and get out of the pissing rain but I guess that's the power of a photograph.