Erika has arrived!

Erika arrived! And she barely had a chance to breathe before we were off on a Mekong Delta tour. The Mighty Mekong runs from the peaks of Tibet, through China and into Laos, Thailand , Cambodia before finally diverting into nine estuaries along the flat plains of Vietnam. Over 17 million people in Vietnam alone rely on the Mekong for food, transport and jobs.

We took a boat ride to a bunch of different islands in the large river and discovered how to make coconut candy, rice wine and coconut rice paper. Erika tried it out and did a good job so we jokes she has a backup job opportunity in Vietnam if she needs it!

That night, we met our Gap group (basically one couple, one German guy and the rest girls!) and had dinner at the night market.

The next day, we met our bus early for our trip to the Cu Chi tunnels. We had the cutest old Vietnamese man as our guide and he was excellent! The tour was ok, we did get a feel for how they lived when trying to hide from the  Americans and got to crawl through some of the original tunnels, but it wasn't very authentic.

The tour ends with a incredibly bad movie filmed in 1967, complete with horrible black and white footage, that is so slighted with anti-American propaganda that it was ridiculous to watch in 2012.  We then found some yummy Indian food and foot massages and before we knew it, we were loading up for our night train. E and I shared a quad bay with the two Danish girls who are health and nutrition majors but taking a break before finishing their masters. It was a decent overnight train actually! Not Deutsche bahn but it'll do.