Delta Rice Farmer

Our 30 ft covered boat with the direct shaft motor and a smiling boatman arrived to pick us up at the restaurant pier and we pac-packed our way off down river on one of the greatest times of our trip. We headed past junks and all kinds of traffic, and then turned into the canal system of the southern delta. We wove deeper and deeper into the verdant creeks and canals with palm and banana canopy until we stuck tight in the mud, the tide having ebbed. Our boatman said that such was expected and that the tide went out at least once every day, but not to worry, because it always came back in again. I had visions of sitting there for 6 hours, when the man, through Heip, explained that the water comes in very fast from 4 different waterways. About that time, however, a smiling rice farmer appeared in the palm fonds beside the narrow waterway and helped us out of the boat onto the dike. We began to walk and I was captivated by the thought of trying to move in this area on foot. It is also possible to hide a whole fleet of boats under this canopy, as indeed they did. It is perfect guerrilla country. 

As we rounded a bend in the dike, we came upon a house and a VietNamese family resting after working in the rice fields all morning. The children waved and their father came to greet us and to invite us into his house, asking us to share tea with them. He got a stick and harvested several milk apples from a tree and led us into his house. There was one large room with two sleeping boards and an ancestor altar on the back wall, as all houses. The kitchen is an open sided area to one side of the house. The man's mother sat and pried us for information about the US, and especially the life of the 2 million VietNamese who life there, having escaped after 1975. Her niece and her family fled in 1976, it seems, and are living somewhere in California. The lady asked if California was near the US. The tea had ice in it. That is a no no in the delta. I whispered the question to Heip when I could and he shook his head. The tea is boiled, he said, but not the ice. The grandmother began to be disturbed that we were not drinking their tea, so, in the interest of good will, I went ahead and drank mine. John declined, wisely. By the way, I don't think much of milk apples.

By that time the tide was running and the estuaries were filling rapidly. Off we went, entranced by the unting beauty and mystery of this place, where westerners just don't go. Our guide, Heip, had not been any where near there either. High arched log bridges are everywhere spanning the creeks and canals. The log is only a few inches in width. Lithe people and at least one dog silently walk them with ease. Dark glades hide more water ways in this land of no roads, no automobiles, no trucks, no bicycles; only boats, built of teak, boats handed down from generation to generation. All is silent save the steady creaking of our boat, ghosting along the waterway on oars. No airplanes, no horns, nothing but giant tropical plants and shadows, and the joy of a child's excited voice as he or she would see two scruffy-looking Americans and call for family members to come and look.