Everytime when summer comes, I miss the deep South again. When I was a student, every year I backpacking to Saigon and travel around the South of Vietnam. Although I have traveled almost everywhere in the western part of the Southern land, I am still most impressed with An Giang province. Last year I came back here again with my partner, and try the experiences like a real tourist here, visit this land with a different eye, than just a poor student who always wants to have experiences rustic to save money.
I had a friend from An Giang that gave me lots of good recommendation about where to go, she did told me a few times to visit the Lotus Farm in Long Xuyen city, An Giang but I was not too excited at first. Lotus is not that strange or new to me since in the North, there are also many beautiful lotus ponds. Moreover, once you travel around the deep south, you will have the opportunity to see the large lotus ponds, right next to the road. So when my friends introduced me to visit the farm, I was not into . However, when I heard that there is a very unique mushroom farm here, I decided to go find out right away. I am a fan of all types of mushrooms.
Where is it?
The farm is located in a tourist town named My Khanh, Long Xuyen city, An Giang. It is 10 km from the city center, not too bad of a drive. I have never been so passionate about visiting complex tourist areas like this because I always find it not real or too chaotic. Even so, Lotus Farm is still extremely worth a visit. It gave me quite a new experience, and especially for me to meet new people, they told me very different stories, shared with me a very different perspective.
Thanh, the owner of the farm. He is super friendly, this guy really put up a show for us. He brought us around and tell us the story of how he built up everything from the beginning. In the photo, he is trying to pick up the lotus's stamen. Guys, it looks easy when he did it but it was not. I used all my brain sells but still could not make it.
Thanh said he was one of the first people to come to My Khanh as a model of tourism combined with a farm. He and a few friends have planned this lake as a place to grow lotuses for visitors to visit the farm to buy mushrooms for sightseeing and photography.
Indoor mushroom house
This is the first time I have seen with my own eyes such a new mushroom growing model. They have a wide variety of mushrooms grown entirely organically in-house. The mushrooms are cherished and cared for carefully, growing extremely healthy and clean.
Quite a few people visit this new mushroom farming model. Thanh and his friends also opened classes to teach people farming knowledge as well as franchise the recipes for developing this business model. Others come only for the purpose of visiting and buying clean mushrooms. The price of mushrooms grown in this way is usually 2-3 times more expensive than conventional ones. Therefore, in the whole My Khanh area, people are gradually shifting to cultivating clean mushrooms like Mr. Thanh. If you don't go to Mr. Thanh's farm, you can easily find similar lotus houses.
Thanh's farm also grows other tropical fruits like jackfruits, lychees, pineapples or coconuts.
A twin pineapple
We only spent a few hours of the morning here but I learnt a lot from the people from the farm. It really changed my mind the way I think about organic food. It never clicked in my mind before the meaning of eating organic and why they are so expensive if they are just cleaner. It costs too much efforts to make food truly organic, to make people believe in that and to find a market for it.
I definitely will comeback to visit this farm next time when we travel to the South because I really hope to see them grow and always stay with their origin idea of making organic a "new normal" in Vietnam.
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