Each day, there is a morning excursion and an afternoon excursion. The morning excursion today was a visit to see how clay cooking pots are made, not too dissimilar from yesterday’s clay pot visit. The afternoon is a visit to a fish farm, which I will opt out of. We have visited two too many already; in other words, two total! No need to make it three.

The cooking pots resembled miniature toilets, in my humble opinion. However, they are commonly used in Vietnam. Many households have two or three, as well as a wok. Silt from the river is used as well as clay. To me, the most interesting part of the visit was watching the guys haul the 20+ pound blocks of clay from the river up to the factory.

The clay comes from below rice paddies; it is dug from half of a meter (about 1.5 feet) below the surface. Molds are used to create the cooking pots; ash is used to keep the clay from sticking to the mold. The cooking pots are baked in a kiln at five to six-hundred degrees Celsius for 5 days, then cooled for 3 additional days. The ash from the kiln is then used to fertilize the rice paddies.

This was a wholesale factory; buyers arrive by boat to purchase large quantities of pots which are then sold in local markets. They come in three sizes and need to be replaced every few years.

I was so impressed with the men bringing in the clay in the extreme heat.

It wasn’t yet time to go back to the ship, so we walked about a bit.