In the morning we woke to find ourselves in Vietnam. All the border formalities and inspections completed while we slept. Good morning Vietnam. Same river, different country and everything had changed. Well, the river was similar. Wide, brown, silt laden water. But now it was busy. I mean extremely busy. Ships everywhere. We were on a major highway for barges and floating platforms. Bulk carriers of limestone, chippings, pebbles, gravel and mud were all around us. Big barges discharging into smaller ones. Smaller ones into tiny ones. Cranes lifting stuff between vessels. Dredgers sucking up more sand. The banks were lined with housing and warehouses. Floating homes, somewhere between a houseboat and a cargo boat were all around.
Mid-morning the Mekong Princess dropped anchor near the town of Hong Hgu. We all hopped into a sampan and went off for a look round. A sampan is a traditional, flat-bottomed wooden boat common in Southeast Asia. The word comes from the Cantonese term sāan báan, meaning “three planks,” which describes the simple hull design of a flat bottom joined to two side pieces. The shallow draft and ease of construction makes these small boats ideal for getting around on the river. Larger sampans have an engine and the smaller ones get paddled by someone stood up by the stern.
We went ashore and set off on a short tour of the village. There are only ten of us on a boat made for 30 passengers. I am sure this is a pain, possibly an expensive one, for the owner but it is great for us. For a start, it is quite easy to get to know the rest of the group. I even got to know some names. This is unusual for me; I am embarrassingly terrible at recalling names. It also meant that even a couple of days in we could mostly chat in an easy and relaxed fashion. That was nice.
The tradition here is to bury your parents and other relatives in the front garden. We have seen this ritual before in some south Pacific islands far from here. I find it a slightly odd business. The front gardens here are not especially large. It only takes half a dozen expensive marble tombstones and all the space is taken. Then where will you get buried? I also wondered about moving house. How does having your parents in the front garden affect the resale value of the property? Do you take them with you when you move? Maybe you could do a tomb-swap with owners of the house you are moving into?
The farms generally grow rice and tropical fruit. The typcial arrangement is to have a well-kept presentation garden, with parents, to the road. Then behind the house are the paddy fields for growing rice. Alongside the fields are fruit trees and the occasional cow. The road is sealed but only narrow. Really only suitable for scooters and tuk-tuks. Many families also have fish nets by the side of the river. The nets are everywhere. Simple traps held in place by bamboo poles. There are so many nets that it seems a wonder any fish can every swim more than a couple of hundred metres without being caught.
We wandered down the road and waved at the guys that were eating brunch and toasting us with shots of moonshine. The village is very spread out but at the approximate centre is a general-purpose meeting room. Intricately painted and set amongst some brightly coloured flowers.
Next to this was a small shrine. The majority religion in Vietnam is Buddhism. Our here on the islands of the Mekong Delta, they have their own version of Buddhism designed for farmers. Hòa Hảo is a new religious movement. Typically described either as a syncretistic folk religion or as a sect of Buddhism. Founded in 1939 by Huỳnh Phú Sổ (1920–47), regarded as a saint by his devotees. It is now one of the major religions of Vietnam with several million adherents, mostly in the Mekong Delta. We were shown an altar with pictures of Sổ. Now I would have claimed that there were already far more religions in the world than we need and that creating a new one was just asking for trouble. However, what Sổ did was to make Buddhism more accessible to poor people. Hòa Hảo eschews elaborate rituals and temples, maintains no monastic order and teaches home practice. It also advocates that each devotee can have direct communion with the Buddha. For farmers, this makes the religion enormously more practical to incorporate into their daily lives and work. Be nice to each other and do not spend a fortune, that you can’t afford, on priests, temples and other religious frippery.
The first carpet shop of the day were some weavers. Apparently, there is a long tradition of weaving here although I am not sure why. Most of the required materials need to be brought into the village. Nonetheless, here was an excellent, family run workshop with a wonderful collection of rather ancient looms. Most of them were electric or had been adapted to work that way. One of the looms, takin pride of place at the front, was completely manual. The father fired this up for us and weaved a short length of fabric. They were making cotton goods. Mostly cotton scarves which are commonly used throughout SE Asia. Diane and I were sufficiently impressed that we each bought a scarf. It was nice to see something that was genuinely genuine (and ludicrously cheap).
With that, we all made our way back to the sampan and then back to the ship for lunch.
