Mekong Delta

We spent a day touring around the Mekong Delta area of Vietnam. We left from Ho Chi Minh City and travelled via speedboat.

Our first stop was the Tuong Van Pagoda. There was actually a wedding occuring while we there. A relative of the couple came out and spoke to us and asked where we were from. We told him Sydney. He told us that his sister lives in Canberra and then invited us to come and see the wedding. So we sat at the back and watched part of the wedding. During the wedding a monk was banging on this drum. They also told us it was find to take pictures inside the temple and during the wedding.

We visited some Mekong farming villages. At one of the farms the family there owned a pet snake named Daisy. We were able to pat Daisy if we chose.

One of the homes along the Mekong Delta. There are lots of homes like this. If you look closely you can see somebody resting in a hammock. Our guide said that the government is trying to get rid of these homes because they throw their garbage straight into the river.

Erica and Clara enjoying the slow pace of Mekong life. Our guide indicated that most people would work about four hours per day and then spend the remainder of the day resting (and drinking). I don't know if this is completely accurate or an exaggeration, but we did see quite a lot of people not doing a lot. On all of the farms we walked past and visited there were plenty of people around, but I only saw a couple of people doing actual farm work. This sentiment was repeated to us multiple times. Our guide in the Cu Chu Tunnels said that the work of 6 Vietnamese = the work of 1 Singaporean (which I found to be a slightly offensive generalisation). Our guide on the fishing tour in Hoi An indicated the same thing - she said that most people in her area will work about half a day. Or they do a job like fishing where they work full-time for a number of months and then don't work for the remainder of the year. This surely can't be true for everybody though!

Clara petting some chicks at the markets.

The fish that we ate for lunch. We visited an orphanage run by monks and ate lunch there.

This is a Cao Dai Temple. I had never previously heard of Caodaism. The religion was established in Vietnam in 1926 and there is somewhere between 4 to 6 million members. It is most popular in Southern Vietnam.

The Cao Dai religion tried to find a balance between multiple different religions. Our guide described it as 'taking the best from each'. They have drawn from Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Christianity, Geniism (had never heard of that before) and others. The guide discussed ways that Caodaism adheres to different parts of each of those religions, but I can't remember all of the detail. I do remember that they have their own Pope and Cardinals. The figures in the pictures above represent each of the religions that are blended to form Caodaism.

Our guide also explained that one of the biggest religions in the world, Islam, was not drawn upon in terms of practises, so they have borrowed some of the architecture (the arches above). Very diplomatic.