Saigon, again part III

We also visited the Mekong delta, it's only a short drive from the City and being one of the largest rivers in the world its delta is pretty impressive and has many huge islands (some the size of UK counties). Being in the middle of such a large river and having a rainy season that reliably floods the entire place, the soil here is amazing and regularly gets replenished by the silt from the river. It's the ideal place to grow fruit and veg, and that's exactly what the people who live here do. 

After a quick boat trip across the river to one of these islands, we stopped at a little tourist place offering samples of some of the fruits grown here (see above), there were the usual suspects like mango and pineapple but also several that I'd never tried in the flesh, like Jackfruit and some peach like things that I can't remember the name of. The little bowl in the middle is full of chili, you're supposed to dip your fruit into it before eating, I'd never done that before and it was surprisingly good, the contrast of sweet and hot worked well!

Another local delicacy was the "Elephant Ear Fish" a native species of the Mekong. I'd never heard of it before and was somewhat skeptical, anyway, one of our gang ordered one at a restaurant on the island and we waited in anticipation. The pictures below show the before and after deep fat frying, although clearly the one we ate wasn't a large as the fresh one in the top picture..

It was surprisingly good, I guess the strong currents in the mighty Mekong mean that this fish has to swim hard to survive and feed, its meat was a bit like monk fish, i.e. firm, but with a more delicate flavour like trout.

Later in the evening we took a stroll around the city centre, here's a photo of the famous building from where the last "chopper" out of Saigon took off from. You can clearly see the flat roofed tower at the top that featured in that famous footage taken in 1975 at the end of the war. Today it's rather dwarfed by much taller and more modern buildings but it's always nice to see these places in the flesh!

We finished off our last night in Saigon with a cheeky beer at the Da Nang based 7 Bridges taproom, the same brewery that we'd come to love from Hoi An. Below is a picture of their impressive tap wall, although we couldn't resist the "Dragon IPA" again!

I was a bit sad leaving Saigon and although it was (in places) a busy, dirty, noisy place it had that positive energy some cities have and certainly a lot to offer the culture vulture and craft beer fan. Anyway we packed our bags and readied ourselves for the next leg of the trip, up river and to the border! Cambodia beaconed.