Mekong River Tour Vietnam 🇻🇳 | Scenic Boat Ride & Local Culture

We're starting off our day here at the Ben Thanh Market. We're starting off with some brunch. Alright, so we're back here again today. This is 40 VND. We've got grilled pork chop and some rice. Here we've got a blueberry smoothie. This was like, I think it was 30 VND. So for about 70 VND, which is about 3 USD, you'll get a smoothie and a rice plate. It's not the cleanest of places. On the tables, you'll sometimes see a roach or some flies. However, I think the food is still really good. It's still pretty sanitary. I highly recommend it. Alright, so we just finished eating. Now we're going to go buy some clothes. I've got some advice for you guys when you come here, especially during the summer. During the summers here, it's like 100 degrees Fahrenheit, 37 degrees Celsius plus. Make sure you pack in your luggage a lot of dry fit clothing. If you don't have dry fit clothing, you can pick up some over here. They're relatively cheap. I don't know if the clothing here is counterfeit or not, but I think the quality here is pretty good. Hello sir. Oh, okay, so you've got 25 minutes. Do you need a T-shirt? No, it's okay, it's okay. Do you need a T-shirt? A sock? Do you have dry fit long pants? This one's ripped. The one with the zippers over here? I mean long pants. Yeah, yeah. This one is long here. This one is the same here. Okay. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay. Thank you. Hello, hello. A bag for you, sir. Oh, it's okay. We're back in the hotel now. We got a wind stopper jacket. This was about 400,000 VND. Then we got two short sleeve under armor dry fit T-shirts and a long sleeve over here. This was about 300,000 VND. And then we also got the hat. This hat was 100,000 VND. So a total of about a total of 800,000 VND which is equivalent to like 30 USD, it's not a bad deal. I don't know if this is counterfeit or not, but the quality is very good, highly recommend it. I don't recommend you guys to pack as much stuff as I did. That way you guys can buy some more and carry more when you go home. Somebody was too heavy. I think this is part of a tour group, I'm not sure how much it cost, but these people all came together in a tour bus and I think it's part of a group package. So I guess here's my ride. I get to ride a car. That was the Propaganda Bistro, highly recommend it. It's a little bit more pricier than the other restaurants, but the quality is still just as good. Despite the restaurant's name being called Propaganda Bistro with the communist theme, it didn't really feel too communist, it actually felt more western. I don't understand why they put all this stuff on the sidewalk. When you put this stuff on the sidewalk, how are the pedestrians supposed to walk? I know, work needs to get done, but I'm sure there's better places to put your supplies. One thing I like about this city is that almost everything is a walking distance. You can get around with your own two feet, a bicycle, a moped. Having a car is not really required here, it's nice and convenient, but it's not a necessity. Like back in the States. You can see that most people drive a moped, so a moped is the choice for transportation here. Alright, that's it for me today, I'll see you guys tomorrow. Just booked a tour to the Mekong River this morning, it costed $25 by bus. Just got here at 7.30 in the morning, so let's go. And there's our bus. Alright, now we're going to our bus. Okay, and you know that this word can be a little bit misunderstanding due to the tone I think it's raining season right now, it's good that it rains. When it rains, the temperature tends to go down. Look at those guys on the moped, can you imagine yourself driving in the rain like that? The sleeping one in the middle, that is the Buddha of the present. His name is Siddhartha Gautama, and also the creator of Buddhism too. And the last one, Happy Buddha, the Buddha of the future, very famous worldwide. So for the name you can hear that, so each of them watch out different time zones, the past, the present, and the future. And also they have different meanings behind, so for these ones over here, the Buddha of the past. Later, you can get inside the entrance to see the front of the statue. This hand side does something like this, this hand side does something like this, you see? The two fingers stick to the other to create a circle. And this circle represents the circle of life. Everything around us is connected, what goes around, comes around. So this circle represents for karma, and also for reincarnation. So for all Buddhism believers, they believe that death is not the end. It's a transformation to a new kind of existence. So in the lifetime of a Buddhist, they can be a Buddha, they can be a human being, or they can be a tree, depending on what they have done in their past life. So they believe in past life, reincarnation. So this circle represents two things, karma and reincarnation. And you see the statue in the middle, the sleeping Buddha, the Buddha of the past. His name is Siddhartha Gautama. And you know, he was once a real prince in the south of Nepal back in the day. And you know, because he was a prince, so he lived in a very wealthy life. A thing that we may consider as happy, but he himself didn't feel happy. So he decided to go around and visit his local people. And on the journey, he figured out that every single human being has suffered. So he acknowledged that there are four kinds of pain, four kinds of suffering that one human being has to go through. So firstly, birth, aging, sickening, and then death. So he acknowledged that, and he wanted to know more about the truth of life, the truth of suffering, so he started to meditate. So later he got enlightened. He wanted to share his knowledge to other people to help them get through their own suffering. So that's how he formed Buddhism. So his name is Siddhartha Gautama, the creator of Buddhism. And you know that about the word Buddha. So now we're here at a Buddhist pagoda. There are four different Buddha statues. Here is the happy Buddha. It said the happy Buddha represents happiness and longevity in life. Here's the third Buddha statue. How much for one? How much? This is banana rice. Each one is 30,000 VND, which is equivalent to one US dollar. It's mixed with coconut, coconut sauce. So this is what it is. It's mixed with rice, banana, and coconut sauce. All right, so now we're going to catch a boat ride to an island. I'm not sure what the name of the island is, but we're going to find out. We'll trade that way, like 50 kilometers, go to the sea. The South China Sea or the East Sea. We turn right here, we go 170 kilometers, we go to Cambodia border. We keep going this way, we go back to the upstream of this river, which is from China. And then we go to find all the countries, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and then here in Vietnam. After that, we go to the sea that way, 50 kilometers. And for the name Mekong, say the name Mekong. Mekong means mother, the mother river. The people here, especially the farmer, they name river like that to show respect to the river. Because the water from the river is very good for plantation. Later, we can have a look at the water. There's a brown color within the water. That's not due to pollution, that's due to kind of mud. We call that alluvium. And alluvium is very good for plantation, such as rice and tropical fruit. And that's why on the way, you see there's a lot of rice, very few on the way. So Vietnam is number one rice exporter around the world. And 90% of the quantity come from the Mekong Delta, 90% amount that we export to around the world. And this place also a lot of tropical fruit like pineapple, mango, banana, some stuff like that. So while chilling here, right now we are visiting the Mekong city. Okay. Now we are here, we got a boat. We go to this island, the biggest island here. We call it the unicorn island. The animal with the heart, unicorn. Okay, so at this place, we're gonna have, see how they plant honey over there. Then we go to the local factory of coconut candy to see how to make candy from coconut. Then we have some fruit, some music. After that, we get on the rowing boat somewhere around here. We get on the rowing boat, go back down here, back to the big boat. Then we go this way, and then we turn here to this island, the biggest island to have lunch on this island. Finish lunch, we go back to the terminal, back to our bus. Okay. So that's gonna be our journey here on this river. Okay. And on this river, there's four big islands, unicorn, phoenix, tortoise, and dragon. And that's them. Some dried banana. This is honey. Yellow is ginger. And I hear of something like chicken, rat, frog, bird. And with the big ones, sometimes they also have tourists. Okay. Anyone want to have a photo with him? Inside that gonna be 70% coconut milk and 20% malt. M-A-L-T, malt. Malt. Like malt liquor? Yeah. So the malt is cooked from fermented sticky rice. And with that, it comes with a natural sweet. And that's the reason why candy here doesn't need to have sugar. Because the sweet comes from the coconut milk. M-A-L-T, it's better to look at the photo. Like this, they leave it rest here for 20 more minutes until it's hard enough. Okay, so with this, you see that they rub the candy onto a layer. So the white layer is real rice paper. Okay. They put the candy on the rice paper. Alright, so we're gonna go take a ride on the boat now. I was told that you don't want to stick your hands in the water. There's crocodiles in the water. Alright, so we're on the boat now. We're going through the river. I'll show you guys around. Hello. Xin chào. Alright, we're back to our boat now. This is a homestay. Can you imagine staying here? A homestay? It doesn't look too bad. I think one can definitely spend their honeymoon here. Alright, we're going back to the boat. I think the boat's about to leave us. So we gotta hightail it back. Alright, that's it for the tour for today. I'll see you guys tomorrow. Alright, that's it guys. We're gonna walk home now. Goodnight.