Continuing our week of low-key hanging at home stays: we didn’t leave the property at Daniel’s Mekong home stay. We booked all of our internal transit in Vietnam and read up on some of the places we would be visiting, as well as just reading and relaxing as much as we could in the intense heat. 

Over the course of the day, large, raised bug bites appeared on my arms and legs despite seemingly few bugs around. At this point, I was sure it was mosquitos, and applied cortisone frequently. 

Another day of reading and applying cortisone is punctuated by my evening realization that the only possible explanation for my bug bites is bed bugs. I handled it completely rationally, and didn’t go on a long internet fueled search for images to corroborate my explanation, and definitely didn’t spiral further, thinking how our next hotel wouldn’t even let us in. 

We informed our hosts, and they said it wasn’t bed bugs (we now think they were probably correct), but did change our sheets for us. We did not sleep well, and had an early morning the next day. 

Rising before the sun, we were led to the nearby canals and ushered into a longboat with our guide, Becky. Having taught herself English by watching movies and, more specifically, watching actors’ mouths form the sounds, she spoke English incredibly well and even had a very convincing American accent. Our tour of the day was peppered with stories about her life and perspective on Vietnam. 

We visited the famous Cai Rang floating market: a longtime (read hundreds if not thousands of years) spot of congregating in the Mekong delta where the 9 branches that spread over the countryside come together. Vendors who lived on boats and who picked up, ferried, and sold various fruits and vegetables (sometimes only a single variety in at a time!) mingled with smaller boats that brought toiletries, snacks, batteries: a corner store in a rowboat. We wove through the hundreds of boats, eventually docking at one the stationary structures closer to the bank. A noodle-soup breakfast and tour of a rice noodle “factory” (one woman with a press for thinning dough and a specialized cooking set-up for the thin sheets before they are cut into noodles) brought us to another quick boat ride to a terrestrial market. 

Our final stop was a cocoa farm run by local legend, Uncle Ten (so-named for having 9 older siblings). A step by step demonstration of cacao beans at various stages in the process towards a product we recognize from the 100+ billion dollar industry highlighted how many steps are necessary to achieve that iconic flavor. It was especially heartening to see what Uncle Ten meant to our guide: an elder who had brought his business back to his hometown and been a mentor and adult figure in many young peoples’ lives in the community. 

Returning in the early afternoon, we lunched, napped, and planned our cleaning approach for our perceived bed bug situation when we arrived in Ho Chi Minh City.