Sóc Trảng

This weekend was an exciting one because we took a field trip to the beautiful provence and city of Sóc Trảng, and then toured along the coast of the South China Sea. It was also the weekend of the long-awaited autumn festival, filled with lanterns and delicious (to some) mooncakes.

We left early on Saturday morning, and the five of us piled into a van with our academic director, our program assistant, another professor from the university, and a friend that we made at the university whose family lives in the area. That coupled with the fact that the van seats were made for people of Vietnamese size made it a little cramped for us long-legged americans. It took us about an hour to reach the city limits. Every major town in the Mekong Delta is about 60 km apart. This has something to do with the tides, but it also makes it easy for people to be able to judge time and distances.

Getting a glimpse of the countryside is one of the best parts of our excursions. At least in the South, the countryside is not as amazingly spectacular as I thought it would be. There are no breathtaking vistas or stunning wildlife, but it is unlike anything I have ever seen. I think I have failed to mention before now that it is currently the monsoon season here, and as a result everything has a dullish tone. The sky is grey, the tin houses take on the same hue, and the rivers are a muddy brown, yet there is still something hauntingly mysterious about the scenery. In general, all of the main roads are lined with houses and businesses and it offers a very intimate view into people's lives. You see mother's nursing babies, children running and playing, families drying and packaging rice, eating lunch, selling their wares, and generally living. Then you will break out of the development and see rice fields lined with banana trees which look like they expand forever. Plus, the roads are lined with man-made canals, the main form of transportation in the south. It is beautiful, and which ever way you look, there is something interesting to see.

One of the main reasons for this trip was to see the temples of the south, which are rich with Khmer (or Cambodian) influence. Every temple we saw was slightly different, but they were especially different from my impressions of what I thought a Buddhist temple would look like. Khmer buddhism is greatly influenced by Hinduism, and all of the outsides were very colorful and intricately decorated. One of the traditions of the Khmer people is that when the men are age 18, they have to leave their families to study the ways of the Buddhist monks for two years and it is a tradition that is still upheld today. So, many of the temples had dormitories next door to them filled with monks-in-training. There were some really interesting dynamics taking place in and around the temples as well. All the pagoda and temple land is used as community land. So there were kids biking around and playing, next to families using the space to dry their rice, next to the monks going about their daily routine. Also, a lot of people make a business by working outside of the temples selling goods like incense, fruit, or cakes to offer to the deities. Also, there were women with crates of birds that they were selling because traditionally on a full moon, you are supposed to release all animals back to the wild. Birds have become a symbol of this tradition and as a result many are captured from the wild to be bought, released, and then captured and sold again. It was hard not to by the birds to release them, but unfortunately that would only have perpetuated the cycle. Although each temple had some common traits, they were all unique and interesting.

As I have mentioned before, and I am sure that I will mention again, the food in this country is awesome. We had an amazing lunch filled with seafood (typical cusine of the southern regions), but the best meal we have had by far was that night. We couldn't drive there, and thank goodness we had a local with us to help us find the place, so after winding our way through narrow streets and over tiny bridges we eventually ducked into this tiny little restaurant. The tables were less-than knee high with stools to match and there were no menus. The moment we figured out how to perch ourselves on our seats the owner brought out a pot of red-hot coals, dishes of oil, plates of vegetables, raw seasoned beef, and rice noodles. Last but not least she put a little metal tray on the coals. We put a little oil on the tray, and then cooked up our own meat. When some of the meat was cooked, you would either take a large piece of rice paper or just a leaf of lettuce, add some other very flavorful leaves (I haven't been able to figure out what they are yet), some rice noodles, your meat, a cucumber or dried banana for good measure, wrap it up, dip it in fish sauce, and pop it in. We all agreed it was by far the best meal we have had. Plus, it cost about $12 for the eight of us to eat until we could eat no more.

After that great day, the next day was spent exploring the coast. Turns out, a large typhoon was headed our way but after convincing all three of our trip leaders that we were proficient swimmers (and after that conversation, leaving our cameras in the van), we hopped on to a little boat for a spin around the largest river mouth in the delta. It was breathtaking. We were there at lowtide, yet the expanse of water was still impressive. We were told that usually more boats were on the water and further investigation up a channel revealed that there were tons, but they were taking shelter from the storm moored safely next to the mangrove forests. Apparently, the soil is so silty, and so much is washed down from the river that the shoreline grows about half a kilometer every year. This is possible because the shoreline is filled with a type of mangroves (cousins to those down in Florida) and they have a vast root system which allows for the coastline to grow in such a way. [This picture was added for the sole purpose of giving you a look at the boat we took, and not to flatter the author of this web log.]

We arrived safely to shore and continued our drive down the coast just as the typhoon was gathering speed. The land along the coast was not filled with rice fields, but rather with shrimp farms still giving us interesting things to look at. Through the rain we drove, but the roads were very empty because everyone here drives motorbikes. Some people kept on cruising through the rain, but others would pull off into roadside cafes or shops and hang out in a hammock until most of the rain had passed. With the luxury of our van, though, we were able to keep on truckin', although we did take time to enjoy the local way of life... We had lunch at a beautiful restaurant on the ocean (literally, on stilts, above the ocean) had a quick tour of a shrimp farm and then headed back north.

When we got back to Can Tho, the adventure was not quite over yet. Because it was high tide and there were heavy rains, and it is in the peak of the monsoon season, most everywhere in the south was flooded, including the street in front of our hotel. People were blockading their doors to prevent the water getting in, but no one seemed too phased by it. We, on the other hand, had a great time romping around in the last few gusts of the typhoon, and then went up, dried off, and went to bed to prepare for another week of school, and the long awaited move into our homestays!
[In this picture, I am wearing my poncho, which has become a necessity for the rainy season, especially when no one has cars. You can ride your bike and successfully cover everything up and keep things mostly dry with this fantastic invention. It cost me about a dollar, but also a lot of teasing from my Vietnamese friends because apparently it has a large advertisment for diapers on the back, which I didn't know because it was written in another language... Ah well, it is still one of the most valuable things I posess here.]

Well, this has been yet another long-winded post. I hope no one is too overwhelmed but I feel as if I only just touched on the past two days. Anyway, there will be more soon!

Hẹn Gạp Lại,

Julia

By the way, here is one of the newspaper articles which was written about us, and this picture was huge in the hard copy of the national newspaper. (If you can't tell, that's me playing the Vietnamese version of a cello)
http://www.thanhnien.com.vn/News/PrintView.aspx?ID=122713
http://www.thanhniennews.com/entertaiments/?catid=6&newsid=9231