Biking Through The Rice Fields of Vietnam

Moving south from Hue, I spent a few days in Hoi An, a well preserved classic Vietnamese city.  It was overrun with tourists, so I hired a bike tour and spent a day biking in river delta around Hoi An.  You need to get around the water?  Here's your ferry.

All boats in Vietnam have eyes on their bow.  The legend is that there are monsters below the surface and the eyes help you see them!

I love scenes like this.  Seeing how real people live and work.  The loading and unloading of motor scooters!

Family car?  No.  Family scooter!

Here's your electricity pole!

Fishing nets.  The let's are let down at night and a water is shone into the water to attract fish.

So, I love finding out how things are made.  Here, a woman is making rice noodles.

And now I am making rice noodles.  Take the ground up rice slurry and spread it out on a steam cloth and flatten it out.

Cover it for a minute and then uncover it.  Get it off the steam cloth by having it rolled onto a round pipe.

Finished product.  The thin rice noodle paddies are layered.....

....and then cut.

Continuing along our bike ride.  "Long live Ho Chi Minh"

One of the few tractors I saw

The planting of the rice seeds.  The old fashioned way.

Making bamboo mats.  The woman chooses the pattern and therefore the color of the straw.  Feeds it through the loom and the man tamps it down tight and ties off the ends.

A basket boat.  These were made popular because boats were taxed, so these baskets were made large enough to be boats.

What's this stuff?

It's Incense!

You feed the incense into a machine and it makes a little tube of incense through which you feed the stick.