Idyllic rural bliss in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam

Two hours drive from Saigon, another world exists. A world of rice paddies, orchards, coconut palms, sugar cane, simple river life and villagers living off the richness of their land.

This is the Mekong Delta, otherwise known as Vietnam's rice bowl - and it's not hard to see why. This agriculturally blessed region is the source of more than a third of the country's annual food crop, even though it makes up only 10 per cent of its land.

Most people take a day trip out from Saigon, but we wanted to dig a bit deeper and avoid the well beaten tourist track  so we ventured a little bit further up to Ben Tre on an overnight home stay to get a better feel for the region - highly recommended!

A boat ride along the river reveals the thriving local industries - villagers are busy making everything and anything out of vast quantities of coconuts...

ferrying sugar cane down the river...

 loading up bricks from the brick factory...

setting traps for fishing..

and weaving mats...

Then back at the home stay...

after some lunch of Elephant Ear fish...

and managing to avoid the scary looking snake and scorpion wine (this one's for you fellas as it promotes virility - they call if Vietnamese Viagra!)..

 we hopped on our bikes...

and precariously navigated the bumpy paths trying not to fall into the river inlets and visited Mr Khank's house, a passionate antiques collector whose house was jammed full of incredible artifacts from Vietnam and Asia and the warmth that exudes from from his enthusiastic way.

The evening's entertainment consisted of a local cooking show-and-try (who knew making spring rolls could be this easy?)...

followed by an attempt at making coconut rice crackers in the traditional way. It's harder than you think - can you tell the difference between the amateur and professional attempt?

The following morning, it's off to the local market. The locals are up at 3am to receive the goods and  it's all over by about 9am so you need to get there early. But they don't go home to rest - most of them head straight over to harvest their land.

Sadly we didn't manage to escape the tourist experience completely and somehow managed to end up with a Non La hat on our heads and on a donkey cart!

Personally I thought she looked much better in the hat than I did...

A fantastic experience. and a beautiful way to get a taster of the Mekong Delta. To follow in these footsteps book a small group tour with Come and Go Vietnam.