Rice is the heart of Asia. Ask any Asian and they’ll tell you, meals are never complete without it. Being predominantly Japanese-Hawaiian and growing up in Hawaii, like many other Hawaii families, I was raised with rice on my dinner table as the staple (and incidentally, it is the “must have” of every Hawaiian plate lunch). Living in Korea, it’s always served with my school lunches and in Vietnam, well… what do you think? The Vietnamese are the second largest exporter of rice in the world after Thailand, and the Mekong Delta contributes to that growth by, sourcing numbers higher than Korea and Japan combined! That’s a helluva lot of rice.
Rice as Life: How does your grain weigh up?
Between boat cruises, biking and weathering occasional t-storm showers of the Vietnamese monsoon season, our tour led us to factories which made products, such as coconut candy, rice paper and rice noodles. We even took a boat to an old rice husking factory.
I admit, there’s nothing adventurous about visiting a rice husking factory; with the exception, it’s a detail you don’t think about when you open a bag of store-bought rice. But now, standing in a warehouse surrounded by mountains of bagged rice, I felt like I was in a huge tit which feeds a nation.
To think how destinies are interwoven- found in a grain and bound together in a bag of rice! An imagined montage of scenes streamed before me: a riverboat family of five huddled around dinner and a heaping bowl of rice; a cabbie on his lunch break, watching passing street life from his motorbike; a special celebration of friends at a fine dining restaurant; and me, a Hawaii-born island girl, standing at the crossroads between a Vietnamese rice husking factory and a mountainous rice tit.
(Above) Entrance of a rice husking factory; (Below) A mountain of rice bags.
Stereotyping Rice: North vs South
Stereotypes between the north and south exist in Vietnam, as they do in most places. According to our guide, here are some of them:
The North: conservative, pride themselves on culture and refinement.
The South: laid back, liberal, open and dynamic .
How does this affect rice farming? Northern Vietnamese farmers painstakingly plant their seeds one by one in neat and orderly fashion (as pictured below). Women are often employed in this position, as they have the one desired trait that men don’t … patience. Alternately, the southern method of farming is simple, straight-forward and left to survival of the fittest. Southern Vietnamese farmers take the seeds, throw them out into the fields and what grows,… grows! (Perhaps, the south employs more male-dominant farming?…)
(Above) Rice planted in the north. Notice the orderly planting?;
(Middle) Terraced rice fields in the north; (bottom) A rice field in the south.
Vietnamese Rice Paper & Rice Noodles
While Vietnam food inspires dreams of Phở (Vietnamese noodle soup) and Goi cuon (Vietnamese fresh spring rolls) for many westerners; the Vietnamese diet consists of two staples– rice and rice noodles. Rice paper is another thing the Vietnamese are known for producing.
Until this point, I’ve been trying Vietnamese fresh spring rolls, but sadly hadn’t tasted “delicious” yet. The two times I’ve tried it 1) it tasted like paper and 2) it came deep-fried and swimming in oil. Ick. Food-wise, it was still the start of my trip and I was hoping things would look better.
At a rice paper factory (above) woman spreads rice water over a steamer for cooking; (below) she gently peels off the rice paper.
The process of making rice paper and rice noodles are quite similar. The rice is steamed and pressed until you have a milky colored rice water. The resulting liquid is poured over a steam plate and cooked for under a minute. It’s a very quick process. When it’s ready, the rice paper is carefully lifted the steamer (photo above), or removed via bamboo roller (pictured in the process below). Finally, the rice paper is laid out on bamboo to dry.
Making Rice Noodles
(Above) Woman spread rice water over a hot stove; (Below) woman removes the cooked rice paper with a bamboo roller.
Voila! Rice noodles drying and awaiting the cut.
Didn’t stay long in Vinh Long:
We docked at a river village to have lunch and go biking. Then it was off on a canal tour by longboat. One thing I love about little villages along the canals of the Delta is the timeless and quaint feel of ruralism. Biking around, you can find many pockets of beauty tucked away in small country stores, canal houses with jail-broken chickens running around or an old barber shop.
Sadly, in larger towns such as Vinh Long and Can Tho, nothing seems exceptional or characteristic of what you’d romanticize of a town in the Mekong Delta. Much of it embraces a bit of modernity and mall life, though my time was too short to explore much.
(Above) Seller sells fruits near the marketplace in Vinh Long; (Below) A mother & daugther work at their meat stall at the market.
A quick market slide show tour - My 30 minutes in Vinh Long.
Vinh Long by first impression, is a scrappy town, a bit chaotic and rough around the edges. It’s big attraction seems to be the town market, which sells meat and produce. Meanwhile, Can Tho feels much cleaner and more inviting to tourism the nearer you get to the river. If you ever had to choose between the two, Can Tho is the way to go.
(Above) A 3 story superstore in Can Tho; (Below) Inside the superstore, it’s very reminiscent of a Wal-Mart; (Bottom) Veronica checks out Harry Potter in the Mekong Delta (Can Tho).
(to be continued…)
