Where the Boats have Eyes, Mekong Delta

The Mekong Delta… A name romanticized by eras bygone, vibrant epochs of civilizations that ploughed the land and transformed muddied river canals into basins of agricultural wealth, where devastating battles were waged amongst tall reeds and hidden sentry points, and the life-giving torrent of the great Mekong flows into the sea in a complex web of tributaries and fertile channels. Although the dizzying metropolis of Ho Chi Minh is just a few hours away, life along the river banks remains traditional; but slowly, combusted highways are beginning to link bustling ports, populations are rocketing and cities are encircling the fertile rice fields. In a transitional flux, to enter the Mekong is to experience a changing Vietnam.

Ushered from the port in Vinh Long at the painful hour of 6am onto a slender bright blue boat with peeling paint and a spluttering engine, between moments of semi-sleep and bouts of lucid dreaming I watched the Mekong float by in a daze. Indeed, this was the Mekong I had always imagined- large waterways giving way to tributaries of smaller islands, vein-like structures with main arteries of commerce slowly ebbing off to winding narrow capillaries hardly a meter in width, throughout which drifted canoes and boats of all shapes and sizes laden with goods undergoing various different activities.We had arrived to Vinh Long by bus from Ho Chi Min City, and were departing the next day by six hour bus through Can Tho to Chau Doc (the border town next to Cambodia).

Quintessential waterway scene

Upon each boat, crouching figures sorted mounds of tubers, rinsed dragon-fruits and pineapples in the river water, broke shells off tree nuts, sifted through endless piles of rice, and directed their vessels to the day’s destination or to nearby floating markets. It seemed that a considerable amount of enterprise went into the preparation of each good, yet every object is always sold a thousand times over in neighboring stalls and barges; for example, one would see five women hunched over a pile of pomelo grapefruits, cutting and dividing them to be sold in markets that are already saturated with pomelos... Which stall a customer ends up choosing over another is so random, that it seems a precarious existence for your whole income to depend on the chance sale of a few fruits. It was again a reminder that in such regions, the financial requirements of a household and the cost of living must collectively be set very low in order for most people living off agriculture and other odd jobs to be able to get by. Because to be honest, I have not seen much abject poverty in Vietnam; perhaps people just live off the food and products that they fail to sell.

The view from our boat

Mekong barges are endowed with a very particular trait that makes them extraordinarily human-like. Two simple black and white ovular eyes, painted on the bow on either side of each boat’s keel, personify these floating companions and give them amusingly goofy and silly looking expressions… Each boat ferrying on with resolute determination, waves parting ahead, mind fully focused on the mission at hand. Small customizations on each boat also made a very entertaining visual game- white anchor symbols painted in between the eyes, sometimes an intertwined yin and yang, a club symbol, maybe a heart. Once you get accustomed to seeing boats decorated in this manner, suddenly the ones that do not have painted eyes seem cold and forbidding, now mere vessels used to carry cargoes of dredged-up riverbed sand or vegetables from point A to B. I like to imagine that because a boat on the Mekong Delta has become such an essential partner in a local’s life, an intrinsic part of their daily living and sustenance, it transforms into a living thing in and of itself.

Now you see me, now you don't

We made several stops along that day’s journey.  Firstly, to a bee farm, where we were served cups of gentle Jasmine tea sweetened with delicious homemade honey and where they tried to sell us various bee-related paraphernalia such as Royal Jelly, a healthy nectar collected by the worker bees for their Queen’s unique consumption, bee pollen claiming cures for insomnia and other muscle ailments (I succumbed), cinnamon flip flops, and vials containing alcohol inside which marinated miniature snakes gripped large scorpions in their mouths. We also visited a coconut candy factory, and watched as a thin pancake mixture made from coconut and black sesame seeds was poured onto a heated surface powered by rice fire, and then spread onto wooden sheets to be fired up and made into crunchy, tasty coconut delights.

Coconut candy

Lastly came a bonsai garden whose bonsai trees themselves were completely unexceptional (looking more like trimmed shrubs than miniature artistic trees) but luckily did contain other secret discoveries. In a back corner, a prehistoric dinosaur loomed its silver beady eyes out at us from the shade of a weathered stone fountain, an antique fish drawn to the surface by any object that would pierce into its subterranean lair. However, I think its life might have been drawn an unfortunate bitter end as I ashamedly admit that one of my not-so intelligent friends with misplaced kindness decided to feed it a litchi fruit, outward sweet flesh not betraying the hidden indigestible large seed inside. 

But the fish was not the sole ancient resident of this odd garden lost in time and space- in the courtyard of a small building sat splay-legged in a dark green hammock one of the most emaciated human beings I have even seen in my life. Mumbling incoherently to herself, skin drawn over the three orifices in her face, lips, eyebrows, eyelashes and any other features worn away by time and now indistinguishable, lay a woman whose haggard skeletal features distorted a maybe-smile into a thoroughly unsettling grimace. Pretty much, the stuff that nightmares are made of. At first I thought the woman was trying to speak to me and I awkwardly attempted to tell her that I did not speak Vietnamese, but soon I gathered that she was not really saying much at all, gazing into the distance as she muttered on, staring at me but looking through me. I shivered as I thought about what happens when the body remains whilst the mind has departed, and contemplated this poor grandmother who lived under the same roof with relatives who took no notice of her as they went about their daily routines, clearly accustomed to such ramblings, having converted the elderly lady into something not at all human, an invisible element that life simply passes by.