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This next sequence of photos came as a surprise to me, as I had never read the novel L’Amant (The Lover in English) by Marguerite Duras, published in 1984, nor seen the 1992 film of the same name. It is apparently an autobiographical work although that is open to debate. She is the author of a great many novels, plays, films interviews and short narratives. Her parents were French citizens who came to French Indochina (now Vietnam) in a response to a campaign by the French government encouraging people to work in the colony. Marguerite was born in Gia-Dinh, near Saigon. She had a wealthy lover, Huynh Thuy Le, and this is his house, a magnificent home preserved like a national treasure.

The house is rather small, and set back considerably from the street, with a magnificent courtyard.

It was immediately obvious that the person who lived here was wealthy. He was the son of a Chinese business magnate.

As we entered the house, we were greeted by some women who offered us a cup of tea. This is a photo of the author.

These are photos of the actors who portrayed the rich Chinese paramour and his lover. I thought it was interesting that she was portrayed as a young Chinese woman, rather than as the author, a French woman.

The intricately carved trappings with considerable gold leaf were very beautiful, well preserved, and so typically Chinese

After seeing this home, and given the story behind it, it made me want to find the book in English to read it. So, I visited Amazon.com of course. I found not only the Kindle version of the book, but the movie as well. I watched the trailer, and liked it enough that I am considering buying it. I never thought I would be an advertiser for Amazon, but just in case there are others who might also be interested, here is what I found.

After our visit of the house of Huynh Thuy Le, we boarded our sampan for the ride back to our ship for lunch. We cast off from Sa Dec at 11:30, bound for Cài Bè, where we would have another shore excursion taking in the Floating Market.

We travel by sampan again, to an interesting factory where various candies were being manufactured, and where we were even allowed to become involved in the process of popping the rice for the coconut candy they made.

There were certainly lots of interesting sights along the Mekong.

The woman below is a master at making those very thin rice pancakes which are used to make spring rolls, and other things. It was amazing watching her skills at work. She made it look so easy, everyone thought “I could do that!”

Yeah, RIGHT! She eagerly gave us the opportunity to display our capabilities.

It did look easy to do, but the actual doing was a different story.

Just look at the holes in those pancakes. Do you thing you could create an appetizing spring roll with that? ;o)

Now Mick on the other hand, was up for trying anything. I had to admire his adventurousness.

His pancake looks a lot like the one the master had made, but I could tell Mick was a little nervous. ;o)

With a little help from our guide he was able to get it to the drying rack with it still amazingly in tact. We happily turned the process back over to the more capable hands, as we went on to visit other processes going on in this amazing factory.

There were two tools for scraping the coconut meat from the shell, one was quite manual, the other was mechanized.

The coconut was used in a variety of products. Here this girl if forming a candy containing coconut into long strips, to be cut into bite sized pieces.

This assembly line of girls were wrapping each piece of candy by hand, and packaging them for sale.

Here a puffed, or popped rice snack food is packaged for sale.

The making of the snack was very interesting. Everything is done by hand, from filling the mold with the gooey stuff, to gently spreading toasted coconut over the top, and then rolling it flat, ready to be cut into the proper size for packaging.

You could tell these guys had done this many times before.

Meanwhile, as part of the entertainment for the tourists, they kept a rather large snake in a cage behind the shop. And of course adventurous Mick was eager to test his skill as a snake charmer.

Not bad for a novice. Although I wasn’t sure who was winning, the snake or Mick.

I didn’t see the snakes teeth even once. I suppose he is used to this sort of tourist fascination and handling..

What struck Pete and I was the feel of the snakes body. It was not only quite heavy, but the muscles were hard, and powerful. I believe this snake is a Boa Constrictor, and if you’d like to see an interesting battle between a Crocodile and a Boa Constrictor, check out this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bz__IDnNZjE I suspect that the snake we were handling was well fed.

In the next chapter I’ll share some more photos of our interaction with the locals in the candy factory.