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Sa Dec, Vietnam

Today we were in the Mekong Delta, starting out in a town called Sa Dec. This was the site of the American Swift Boat base during the Vietnam war. Today it is an agricultural and industrial trading center. We went to the local produce and meat market and also stopped by the home of French writer, Marguerite Duras’, lover.

From there we went by bus to Xeo Quyt, which was a command post for the Viet Cong. We walked through the forest looking at their bunkers and meeting huts. This site was less than 2 miles from a US military base, but apparently was not ever discovered by our military. Seeing the dense forest, it made sense that our government thought of using things like Agent Orange. The forest was incredibly dense.

We barely made it back to the ship before a mid-day rainstorm. By barely, I mean we got rained on but the really heavy rain started after we were on the ship.

After lunch we wen to Cai Be, a town where they have a floating market. We were there in the afternoon, so not much was going on. Apparently they are very busy from 5-10 am each day. Everything is done by boat: storage, sales, and shopping. Each boat puts what they are selling up on an antenna so that you know what “store” to go to. It looked like nearly everyone was selling various potatoes today.

We also went on a tour of a local candy making factory. They also made snake wine there…literally alcohol bottled with various snakes. Its some sort of folk medicine. We also stopped by a Catholic church. As it is a Sunday, there were a lot of kids there for Bible study so it was pretty busy.

Tonight is our last night on the ship. Tomorrow we transfer for a couple of “land” days in Saigon.

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