that's something you have to get used to over here, food that was probably walking or swimming around just 5 mins before being served on your plate.
anywho, this morning was a nonstop journey from leaving our hotel around 7:45 until now.
we started by having breakfast on the roof of our hotel (that's where the restaurant was) with the most beautiful view of the sunrise and the Mekong river right below us. With everyone well fed and ready to go we piled into into our taxis and headed for our vessel. This was totally radical, we basically got to go on a real life jungle cruise, except if we ran into hippos here, they might tip the boat cause a pop gun ain't gonna scare them off. or boat journey took us all along the Mekong river (central river that runs through Vietnam) we got to see the "floating market" which is a series of boats all floating together, you just have to pull up in your boat, grab your food, clothes, or other goodies, then you're on your way, kinda like a grocery run. Except instead of hopping in the mini van with all your kids, you pack up the boat and head out across the river. The view on the river was absolutely phenomenal. as pictured below, I got to stand on the bow of the boat. With the wind in my hair, sun at my back, and the beautiful trees lining the river, can't think of anywhere else I would rather be right now. It's really hard to put everything we've seen into words (or even take enough pictures to accurately represent it all, which I've taken 6000 pictures already)
The person responsible for putting this awesome tour together is Chi, she is a Vietnamese travel agent who has adopted Bob and Jeanne Smoker as her parents and is working with them as they speak conversational English with the Vietnamese English teachers. A couple of the places we got to visit were the candy factory and the popped rice factory (they were in the same building). Popped rice is basically a rice crispy treat, only it's made from scratch with rice instead of rice crispy cereal. Watching them make the candy (coconut based caramels) and the rice treats was very fascinating. The samples were delicious as well.
One of the stops we made along our journey was at a bee keeping place (not really sure the terminology for that) they had all the bees on the honeycombs making the honey right there. We got a small sample of the honey in some green tea, it was literally to die for, so good!! as with most of our stops there was a small souvenir shop. Something that set this one apart is that instead of the wallets sitting on a normal table, these ones were sitting on top of a cage... a python cage. This snake was huge!!! his body was approx 4-6" in diameter and he was about 7-8' long. A few brave members of our team got the luxury of holding this beast of a snake. While at the bee farm we discovered that Diana is deathly afraid of bees, this made for an entertaining time as anything that flies qualified as a bee as long as we were at the bee farm.
Part of our journey took us down a small river that branched off the Mekong, since our boat was rather large and was designed to brave the waters of the open river, it didn't exactly fit down this small canal so we boarded some sand pans and set off into the jungle. This was a lot of fun because the smaller boats were much quieter as they were rowed instead of powered by a noisy diesel engine. Also, it was like riding through the amazon with the low hanging trees and bushes growing out of the water.
After the mini-adventure with the sand pans, we docked a little ways up river and got to visit a fruit farm where all the Durian, lichi, jack fruit, and other fruits were grown. This was a lot of fun getting to hike through the tropical forests, walk across sketchy bridges (ok, in reality they were only about 3ft off the ground, but they were still fun) and get to see (and taste in some cases) the fresh fruit off the trees.
once the tour was over we headed back to port and had some lunch (probably our biggest meal to date) there was fish, soup, chicken, spring rolls, rice and all sorts of stuff.
*sidenote: Sand pans are typically the boats you see in movies where they have the long poles, so instead of rowing the boat, they push off the bottom of the river. However, these were a little different, since the water was a little deeper, they had oars (kinda like a Gondola, most had two though some only had one)
after our marvelous adventure on the Mekong we got to take our own bus to Tra Vinh where we will be spending the next 10 days talking in English for the teachers, creating conversation, talking about our families, entertainment, jobs, life, holidays, etc. We met Bob, Tyler, and Abby (Abby is interning with the Vietnamese teachers to teach English at the University) for dinner at a BBQ restaurant owned by a very nice Greek guy. After Dinner we headed out to a cafe to meet one of the teachers we will be working with (her name is escaping me, I'll edit this post when I get it)
That's all the adventures we had today, Thankfully we're all remaining healthy and having a blast (Though some might tell you it's a little on the hot side)
Pray for us to have the right words to say as tomorrow is our first day speaking
pray for continued safety, health, and sanity
pray that the heat won't get too unbearable
Thank you for supporting us
Soli Deo Gloria
Brandon Goodyear
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