Along with 20 other tourists, we boarded a bus in Ho Chi Minh City for a two hour ride and a day of exploring parts of the Mekong Delta in southwestern Vietnam. The delta is a network of waterways of the Mekong River that converge and eventually empty into the South China Sea.  We were surprised that the delta water was brown and muddy-looking. Maybe it is bluer and clearer other months of the year,

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Our first destination was the Vinh Trang Pagoda in My Tho. This Buddhist temple, one of the best known in the delta region, includes 2 hectares of grounds with numerous fruit trees, bonsai, three very large Buddha statues, and a multi-tiered tower.  As you can tell from the pictures below, we liked the statues and tower more than the temple building.

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Next we boarded a 25-passenger boat at the May Tho Marina and headed off to Unicorn Island for honey tea tasting, a candy-making demonstration, and a canal boat ride. Our hostess at the honey tea stop made the tea right at our table so we could understand why it tasted so delicious: a generous amount of honey, a scoop of pollen, fresh orange juice, hot water, and more sugar.  She also showed us part of a beehive from which they collect the honey.  We resisted the urge to buy their honey lip balm, lotion, and candy.

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From there we walked a short distance to one of the many Mekong canals for a ride in a small, four-passenger boat, very similar to a wide canoe. The ride was pleasant and fairly quiet, despite the congested, highway-like canal boat traffic in both directions.

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Our third stop on Unicorn Island was a coconut candy-making shop.  We observed the entire process from peeling and shredding the coconut to caramelizing the milk to wrapping the individual pieces of candy. And we enjoyed sampling some of the many flavors of their coconut candy. Be sure to watch the entire video below to further understand an infrequent (hopefully) final part of the candy-making process.

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To reach our late lunch spot we rode on a third boat (10 passenger) to Phoenix Island. We ate at a large restaurant along a waterway and afterwards took a look at the mini zoo in the garden area. We wandered around the enclosures for the crocodiles, snakes, porcupines, fish, and turtles.  One of our restaurant servers showed us how a sleepy-looking crocodile could quickly grab a live fish suspended from a pole. 

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