Vietnam’s Mekong Delta has been referenced numerous times throughout history; be it in music, television or film. Always hearing these references, my wife and I were excited to make our way to the famed delta while we were staying in Ho Chi Minh City.

The single most surprising thing to me with the Mekong Delta is the size. The current was ferocious, but the overall width was incredible.

Here in the states we have the Mississippi River and I’ve seen it pretty narrow in some parts and fairly wide in others. The Mekong Delta was easily twice as wide as the widest I’ve seen the mighty Mississippi.

By the way, all of the green stuff floating in the water in the above picture are chucks of various-sized tree limbs. The Mekong Delta is prone to flooding, and as such, there is an abundance of large items floating around.

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I’ve been doing  a lot of behind the scenes work on my website lately.  Because of this, I’ve been scanning through a lot of images from past adventures, and for some reason, this image caught my eye as I scrolled through pictures from Vietnam.

Alisha and I spent some time exploring Vietnam, from Ho Chi Minh City south to the Mekong Delta.  The history and way of life in Vietnam is fascinating, and no better example is the vast Mekong Delta.

Life moves at a slower place in these parts, and it’s a nice change from the hustle and bustle of big cities.  (One of my favorite images can be found in the Asia Travel Gallery with the man and woman motoring to market, while a gentleman washes his hair in the background.)

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Doing a daily photography blog post, I’m oftentimes scrolling through my pictures looking for something for “today’s post.”

Usually I try to vary the images from a close-up picture of something small to a large, expansive wide shot; other times it’s as simple as trying to follow-up a black and white photo with a bright color image.

Then there are pictures like today’s, where something about it grabs my attention and it becomes a blog post.  There have been past images, like the one about dragon fruit in Vietnam, where I spent some time with the picture adjusting brightness and such.  Then there are images like the one above, which is pretty much directly out of the camera.

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I’ve been completely redesigning my website the last few days.

When I wrote this blog entry, I was in the middle of redesigning my website.  It’s finished now, but that’s one of those projects that seems like a good idea at the time, but halfway through I want to take a sledgehammer to my computer.

During the course of my recent efforts (updating the site, not hammering my computer), I have been spending a lot of time going through pictures from the various countries I’ve been to.  (If you’re curious, according to the Travelers’ Century Club, I’ve been to 37 different “countries and destinations that are politically, ethnologically or geographically different.”)  A lot of the past photoblog pictures are making their way into the new Travel Photography section, which I think is nifty.  I like being able to take a new look at the same pictures from before.

The above picture is of dragon fruit, taken at a market in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam.  Alisha and I love dragon fruit, and that’s a direct result of our travels through Vietnam.  It’s a strange looking fruit, but our guide cut it open and we found it’s a little slice of Heaven inside.

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Today in Chicago it has been raining quite a bit.  That’s a bummer because it’s the weekend of the Air and Water Show, and we had grand plans to ride our bikes down to the lakefront to watch the Thunderbirds do their thing.  Mother Nature decided it’d be a great day to stay inside and take a nap, instead.

As I was laying in bed listening to the rain fall, I got to thinking about our time in Vietnam.  For some reason, the Mekong River popped into my mind, and I couldn’t stop thinking about life on the Mekong Delta.  It’s dramatically slower paced then you’d think, where people trade for what they need and make or hunt the rest.

The personal boats of the delta are long and slender, not unlike a canoe.  Other boats are larger and contain piles of a single-type of food.

For example, the boat will hang a pumpkin on a pole off of their bow.  That is an indication they are buying and selling pumpkins.  If you have some pumpkins to sell, or you need to buy some pumpkins, just swing on by!  When the time comes for the boats to officially sell their stockpile of vegetables, the larger boat will motor up to shore and offload to a waiting truck.

It’s a great way for small farmers to team up with other small farmers and create enough vegetation to sell on the market.

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