Mekong Eden

The boat puttered out to Unicorn Island in the Tien River. Cast adrift from mainland My Tho, these four small Mekong Delta islands are named after animals — Unicorn, Phoenix, Tortoise and Dragon — and lie squashed between the city and the neighbouring province. They are veritable gardens of Eden carpeted in flourishing fruit trees — longan, durian, pomelo and dragon fruit — the mainstay of the local economy.
Local paths wind through the foliage, dense with dangling fruit. We passed a line of cumquat trees — pretty with their orange bobble fruit and prized during lunar new year — and searched for the Queen Bee in vats busy with working bees that produce litres of golden honey for national sale. In the shade of a compound we sipped honey tea mixed in with bee pollen served with candied ginger, winter melon and lotus seed; it was idyllic afternoon tea in a bucolic landscape. After tea, we visited locals folding creamy squares into rice paper at a coconut candy factory before climbing into a canoe for a paddle along a tiny canal lined with the giant overhanging fronds of the water coconut, its lumpy fruit clinging like monstrous barnacles at the bases. The boat slipped under a monkey bridge — a single bamboo pole and rail arching across the river for locals to to and fro. This is the true heart of the delta; visit in the afternoon to avoid the morning tour group onslaught.