Incredible Mekong Delta Tour 🇻🇳 Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) must do!

Hi, we're Jordana and Grant from Shot in the Dark Travel. Come join us on our epic adventures around Southeast Asia. In this video we're on a fantastic tour of the Mekong Delta region. We learn lots about the people, history and culture of the area and visit a local market, a temple and a local farm. We eat some delicious seafood and then ride a boat down the river. So it is five past seven in the morning. We are just packing up as it's our last day in Ho Chi Minh. We've got a tour around Mekong Delta and we're going to see some local villages. We're going to go to a temple and apparently there's like a scooter ride or a bike ride, so I'm not sure which we'll be doing yet. But yeah, it should be a good day. The weather looks good. We're sad to be leaving Ho Chi Minh. We've absolutely loved it. I think you could spend so much time here because it's so big and there's so much to do, so much food to try. But yeah, we've absolutely loved it. So let's head out to Mekong Delta. Our first stop was a wooden furniture manufacturer. To be honest, when we first got here, we were thinking this was a bit of a strange option for the tour. But once Phuong, our tour guide, started to explain all the background of everything, it was really fascinating. She explained that ancestor worship is a key part of the culture in the Mekong Delta region and that every family has a worshipping cabinet that goes in a prime position in their house and is used to remember their ancestors. They light an incense stick once a day and do a special celebration on the anniversary of each family member's death. Because this is so important to the people, Phuong explained that families often save up and spend more than an entire year's salary on an ornately decorated handmade cabinet made from the best wood available and it can take up to six months to manufacture it. We found it super interesting to learn about the culture and beliefs of the people from this region. Our next stop was a Cao Dai temple. Learning about Cao Daiism was fascinating. Phuong explained that millions of people in the Mekong Delta region follow the Cao Dai religion which was formed in this area in 1925. A local farmer had a dream which led to him forming a new religion incorporating aspects from all of the main religions in the area. At the back of the temple, you'll see images of Buddha, Laozi, the founder of Taoism, Confucius, Jesus and other spiritual leaders. As well as being super interesting, the temple was really colourfully decorated and looked beautiful. Cảm ơn! I think that might be the first time someone's complimented my nose. She's still single so you can upload it to YouTube by her husband. This lovely lady here is looking for a husband. So this is kind of like a supermarket. Except it's not as organised, you know, it's everywhere. But local people, they know exactly where to go to get their favourite food for the day. Dried fish. Dried fish, by all different types. Nice big, big structure. Yeah, so cow meat, they've been sold like this only for half a day. So they slaughter them at night and they sell them early in the morning until like 9, 10 am. And it's going to be transferred to the local restaurant. So they're going to cook lunch. Because it's not, you know, not refrigerated. So it's going to be live here from day to day. I think it's worth coming here just for all the compliments. It's a big ego boost this. Where are you from again? An. So this is kind of like the centre of the market. Do you have like, would you like to stop by for a cup of coffee? Yeah. So we're just sat down in the market now. Everyone is so friendly. It's a bit hectic, but we're sat down having a traditional Vietnamese coffee. It's so funny because everyone keeps on asking us our age, if my hair's real, if we're married. And apparently that's like the status to see. That's the first thing you ask people when you get to know them. But yeah, everyone is so friendly. It's so cool in here. It's really, really cool tour so far. Really enjoying it. I feel a little bit like a celebrity. Every single person who wants to talk to us. You're going to have to start doing autographs. I don't think they get many tourists here. So it's been really interesting to actually go a bit further afield and not go to all the tourist destinations. I really like the traditional Vietnamese coffee. It's super strong. It tastes like there's about three shots of espresso in. And it's really sweet because the condensed milk. It's a great combo. And after not much sleep last night, it's exactly what I needed. So what have you got there, Jordana? So it's some sort of like rice paper with coconut in it. And apparently a lot of the younger children will eat this and they'll enjoy it. Like something just a bit sweet. That's really weird. It's kind of got the texture of like a prawn cracker. But it's like obviously it doesn't taste like prawn cracker. But it's like the same texture and it's quite sweet. It's really nice. We then stopped off at a homestead to see how the typical families live in the Mekong Delta region. Oh wow, look at all the goats. Oh, have you seen this little baby goat? They will carry bags of rice, about 50 kilograms each, crossing this bridge to get here. So the truck can pick them up. So it can bear your weight if you want to try. It doesn't look very strong, does it? Yeah, I'll get a photo as well. I was looking at it thinking there's no way I'm getting on that. I would say this is a dream come true for me because I would say dragon fruit is my favorite fruit. We're currently at a dragon fruit farm and there are so many of them. Yeah, harvesting season. Harvesting season. So you see the dragon fruit trees out there. Wow, they look so cool. Actually, dragon fruit is like a type of cactus. Wow, I did not know that. So you see the vine? So they have like a vine growing. So they build a concrete, the farmer, they build a concrete bowl in the middle and then the dragon fruit vine just kind of like growing around it. Wow. And the fruit is going to come out a little on the vine on the end. You see that's the green one is the fruit. Funny thing about the dragon fruit is they ripe three times. You know, so when it's young, it's green like that, right? And when it's ripe, it's red. If you don't harvest them, they turn green again. They repeat a cycle. But it gives you like three chances to harvest it. And the best time to harvest is the second time. It's going to be sweet. I have wet wipes for you too. You good? That is so good. Fresh. That is so fresh in it. So we have here tiger prawns. And yeah, barbecue tiger prawns, spring roll, catfish cooked in a clay pot. So they put soy sauce in it. And then you put them in a clay pot to get that nice caramelized color. And tofu stir fry with lemongrass. So that's what you're looking at here. It's like lemongrass. And we tend to eat them with several traditional herbs. So we have basil and Vietnamese mint. And this is a sweet and sour soup. So we also cook them with catfish, more like a broth, like catfish broth. And we serve them with morning glory, water spinach, okra, tomatoes, and mandarin. Right then, let's dig in. I know, it looks amazing. And also look how good this view is. Just straight out onto the ocean. Absolutely beautiful. If you swim that way for a very long time, you will get to Borneo. So I'm just going to try the catfish. I've never had catfish before. So it smells delicious. It's really sweet. But in a good way. It's like the saltiness of the fish. We put caramelized sugar in it. And then the caramel, it's so nice. Really, really good. The oysters have arrived. They've got cheese on. And Jordana loves oysters and loves cheese. So this is right up her street. Very good things. Whether they go together, I'm going to find out. I'm going to go for this massive one. That's so big. That's got to be two or three times as big as a normal oyster, surely. Yeah, nice. That is a meaty oyster. Meaty oyster. Wow, that was delicious. Phuong was just explaining off-camera that they ordered way too much so we can try loads of different things. So we're not supposed to eat all this. It's not a bush-tucker trial where we have to eat until we're sick. It's persimmon. We have the soft option and then the crunchy one, a little bit crunchy one. And we have custard apple, finger grapes and rambutan. And also this is the fruit called langsat. L-A-N-G-S-A-T, langsat. Okay, so give it a try. Is it good? Tastes a bit like peach. So I've got myself here a bong bong, sometimes called langsat. You have to first do this for some reason. To make it sweeter. I wasn't watching the demo so I can't remember what to do. You were too busy eating the bloody custard apple. Now I think I peel it. Yeah. Sometimes people make it look a bit easier than this. Jordana's been raving about this. She had hers a few minutes ago so I'm very excited. It's so delicious. Doesn't look that delicious. It's really nice. Right, I'm gonna go for one little segment first, see how it goes. First time having bong bong. Let's see how it goes. There's a seed in, yeah, a seed in the middle. It's good. Really? It's no custard apple. It tastes almost like... I don't think I've ever tasted anything like it. A little bit like a tangerine. Do you think? I don't think so. Everyone's pulling faces at me. I think you're very wrong there. It's nice. It's good. Incorrect. In front of us, it's like all you see is the island. So we're gonna visit one island today and go on a rowing boat and we're gonna come back. Amazing. This part of the Mekong River is a ridiculous two kilometers wide. So there's one riverbank and there's an island and then the other riverbank is all the way on the other side that you can see just over here. It's absolutely tiny. This might be the highlight of the tour for Jordana. She absolutely loves the coconut. Should we get a cheers? Cheers. Wow. We've had such an amazing day doing the Mekong Delta trip. It has been amazing. The tour group that we went with, which we'll link in the description, is called Water Buffalo Tours. Yeah, I would completely agree with what Jordana said. I couldn't recommend Water Buffalo Tours enough and our tour guide fun was absolutely amazing. I think I didn't really know what to expect from the tour. I thought it was going to be just us doing a bit of a boat trip down the Mekong Delta and it turned out like two-thirds of the day we were like seeing the Mekong Delta region. We went to a market. We learned about the local culture. We went to some temples and Phuong just was so knowledgeable. I was asking so many questions because I'm a bit of a geek. I was like, and what about this? And why did you do that? And what's it like over here? And she just seemed to know. She was like the fountain of all knowledge of Vietnam and the Southern Vietnam region. It was really informative, really interesting and I absolutely loved it. I would 100% recommend it. Yeah, the boat ride at the end, the only thing I would say is I wish it had been a bit longer. I'm not sure if we took too long at the place where we were eating, trying to get the drone to work, which it wouldn't work. So I don't know if that's the reason why it kind of felt rushed at the end. But to be fair, that was quite a touristy place. Like there was loads of people there. Whereas everywhere else we went in the tour, it kind of felt off the beaten track. We didn't see any other tourists. It was just complete locals. No one spoke English apart from our tour guide. So it felt really authentic that we were seeing another part of Vietnam that not many people see. And that's what we really loved about it. Yeah, and I really felt like we got a proper feel for the area as well. And the people were possibly the friendliest people I've ever seen. Oh my God, so lovely. Every single person was just coming up to us wanting to chat. And Phuong has been the translator. And they were so happy and smiley and friendly. It was like ridiculous really, wasn't it? Yeah, but unfortunately, this is now our goodbye to Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City. We are so, so sad to be leaving here. It's probably one of the best parts of the trip. I mean, well, Vietnam has all been so good. So it's really hard to say which has been best. But that is definitely up there is Saigon. We've absolutely loved it. But now we are going to go on a flight. And if you want to know where we're going next, that'll be in our next video. So goodbye for now, guys. Remember to like and subscribe. Bye.