I wanted to cover my Vietnam tour in sequence, but I decided to do day 3 and 4 in a later post as I cannot wait to share today. I knew I was going to the Mangroves – was totally blank when started without any expectations and that’s when I think one really experiences the real wonders awaiting. Some days just comeby and go but today is a day that will live forever and ever.
At about 8.30 Sekhar ,Ragnar and I set out on this wonderful trip with 'Oy' a natural resource researcher who specialized in Mangroves. What best way could we see a Mangrove forest with a Mangrove specialist who is a native Vietnamese.
After driving through the streets of Vietnam outside the tourist district (these areas if you switch the faces with Indian faces can be easily passed off as any common Indian street ) we arrived at the jetty and the journey into the wonder land began. Put on your life jackets and jump onto the boat now. This is a picture intensive post but I promise you will enjoy it.
Many families in their colourful house boats, fishermen, boats carrying sand and mortar - all types big and small criss crossed us on the Saigon river.
This is the first time I saw this water coconut plant and it's cool fruit. Each component had its own small piece of white meat and they eat it with Sugar I heard.
We reached a place to switch to our 2nd boat that would take us inside the mangroves, From now for the next 5 hours it's just roots, plants, water, more and more boats, wild life and just nature around us.
Mangrove forests are special - they grow in swampy areas where fresh water and salt water meet with aerial roots to breathe and flat roots to balance.
After a breath taking ride through the open channels now is the time to enter the small canals and so look who is waiting for us (For some reason I am not able to rotate the pic - I will do so soon :-))
She slowly and gently rowed us into the interiors where we could watch the Bats and fish Crabs. To our surprise we found this boat which is being decorated for the wedding. How romantic isn't it?
Her house is as beautiful as she is and I really liked how she brightened up the natural colors around her with blue's from her boat , windows and the bicycle
Got back to our motor boat again to reach the central area of the mangroves which had many many attractions. I must say the tourism is well developed and is friendly. The people are calm and helpful, the nature is so serene and soothing. I can see myself coming to Vietnam again :-)
I love this basket boat and wanted to try it while Sekhar and Ragnar opted out and had fun watching the balancing acts and skreaks , finally I and Oy set out for rowing and what fun it was as the boat was just going round and round instead of moving forward :-). Ofcourse we did finally learn the trick though.
Yet another boat and another activity - This was scary as the crocodiles were ferocious. We lured them to the fish bait and clicked and clicked to the hearts content.
I told in the beginning itself - It was all about boats and now another one for yet another adventure
and this time to a Bird's paradise...
and now was the time for lunch and we enjoyed the sommersaulting and monkey deeds of our dear friend yellow cheeks gi bbon. I read that this is on the red list of the highly endagered species. We were about 2 to 300 metres from him on a deck and he was such a good catcher - didn't let go most of the peanuts we tried to bowl at him. Even guys like Malinga from the Srilankan team would be caught in the first couple of balls :-). I think our cricket team would do even better with some training from him.
and this little deer waiting for our attention as well.
returned once again to our motor boat only to hop onto a local house boat to see what is it one needs to live and what all else is one wishes to have :-)and I will post that someother time.
Just as everything comes to an end so did our trip , but the end also had a silver lining . We laughed and enjoyed at the fun little Ly was having fishing oysters for her dinner along with her parents. This photo was by Ragnar and OMG!!! OMG !!!! what a photographer he is.
Stay tuned as each day is getting more excited than the other :-).
