A canopy-covered speedboat - the heat is a searing 36C - has brought ourselves and nine other travellers from urban Saigon into the rural heartland of one of the greatest waterways on the planet. For the past two hours we have been roaring towards the Mekong Delta, passing hundreds of fishing boats and huge slow-moving barges weighed down by their cargo - mountains of sand.
The source of this mighty river is in the Tibetan foothills and, by the time it empties out into the South China Sea, it will have flowed 4,500km through China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
Today we will just scratch the surface of the River of Nine Dragons - so named for the way it branches out - but hope to learn something about the way of life here, and bring home a few tales from the riverbank.
We have just stepped off our little boat and entered a world totally foreign to us. As well as those live fish and frogs, there are gaggles of geese everywhere, ducks, hens and chicks - again all alive and kicking, for the time being anyway.
This is not a market designed for tourists - it's too remote. Instead it's where the locals come daily to trade and barter. Here, for example, you can choose a chicken - and the supplier will do the rest, kill it, pluck it and, bob's your uncle, it's a fresh bird on the table for dinner tonight.
Our guide - a delightful 24-year-old from Saigon with a winning smile and wicked sense of humour - takes us around the market, stopping at various stalls, including the one with the pigs' testicles. (Told you she was wicked).
Not for nothing is this emerald green Delta known as the rice bowl of Vietnam. The place is teeming with sack upon sack of the stuff, sitting alongside different types of dried fish and wonderful fruit and vegetables. We lost count of how many crates of melons, mangoes, bananas and limes we saw. Swansea Market, with all due respect to our dear lady cockle and laverbread sellers, will never quite be the same after this.
Back on the boat we make our way along a maze of narrow little arteries - a waterworld of not only boats, but floating houses and markets. We watch little boys, their skins the colour of teak, leap from bridges into the cooling river, take a swim, clamber aboard the coconut boats that line the river's banks and then race back to the bridge to repeat the feat.
We make our way to My Tho, capital of the Tien Giang Province and gateway to the region. We pull up alongside a fancy-looking riverboat where our group lunch on, among other things, catfish - and very good it was too - washed down by a cold Saigon beer.
Next stop is Coconut Village. A circular walk takes us past banana plantations, pig farms and, not unaturally, row after row of coconut trees. We stop to watch a middle-aged lady weave leaves suitable for roofing. Each strip earns her just 100 dong (less than a few pence). She is hard at work every day from dawn to dusk, but still greets us Westerners with a warm smile.
All too soon it's time to head back towards Saigon, but we will reach there much quicker than those barges - some so heavily burdened by their cargoes that they look as if they can barely keep afloat. It's estimated that a one-way voyage from South Vietnam's major city to the Delta for most of the 14,000 vessels that the Mekong's waters daily takes a month. No wonder given the loads they carry.
Our two-hour return trip still offers plenty of time to reflect on a day well spent in a timeless region where life continues much as it has for centuries. We feel privilged to have gained a little insight into a corner of Asia less travelled than many.
It's a fitting way to say Good Night Vietnam as we contemplate another return to Thailand - this time to Chiang Mai in the north of the country and a sanctuary where wounded and abused elephants are able now to roam freely in a natural habitat thanks to a tiny woman with a massive heart and unbreakable spirit.
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