Photos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

In country three days and already we have traveled hundreds of miles and engaged indigenous personnel. Today we traveled the delta called Mekong. Just imagine the Ala Wai, and then imagine some one dumped about thirty million gallons of brown paint into it. Then throw about twenty torn apart heads of cabbage in there, a lot of various plastic products, and about thirty million gallons of sewer runoff (for the smell), and you got a Mekong delta. But as we putted out way up river we saw people swimming and cleaning in the vile substance that made the Mekong. On the tour of the delta we stopped in three places. One was an old, traditional Vietnamese house, which was cool, and the other was this strip of shops, which was also cool, and the floating market, that was cool too.

The old Vietnamese house was very nice. It kind of reminded me of my great-grandmother’s plantation house. There were fruit trees, big rooms, and bugs. This house, however, was different. It seemed totally self reliant. They had the fruit trees for fruit, but they also had fish ponds for fresh fish.

            The other place was this strip of shops on the bank of the river. The first shop we found ourselves in was this candy shop where they made coconut candy and packaged it. The second shop we stopped at was this rice paper factory thingy. Which consisted of one guy throwing rice in hot sand to pop it, a bunch of women putting the popped rice into a giant cube mold, one guy cutting the giant cube mold, and more bunches of women packaging the edible Styrofoam. It was actually pretty good. We also handed out stuffed animals to small children. That showed me how spoiled I am. There were kids my age smiling ear to ear as we handed them a stuffed elephant that squeaked every time you applied the proper amount of pressure if you tried that in the quad of Punahou, you would get some interesting looks and some interesting four letter words thrown in your directions.   

            The third and last place we went to was the floating market, which was a bunch of boats lashed together with poles sticking up with produce attached to the up end, advertising the merchant’s products.

            Going up ad down the Mekong was quite a humbling experience because almost every person, from children playing in the water to the drivers of boats filled to the brim with sand, would wave to us and smile. Now, being from Hawaii I would like to think that I have the aloha spirit and love everyone who comes to my island, but I do find my self wishing bad things upon the tourists sometimes. You would never expect, at first glance, the inhabitants of the Mekong to wish ill luck towards you or anyone in your unit, sorry group. They are the true meaning of aloha.

President Peter Kam, 3/22/70, sorry, 06
Saigon