If Cambodia was the land where we wanted to pick up and hug the children, our first experiences in Vietnam had us wanting to reach out and strangle the adults.*
Our last bit of time in Cambodia and our first few days in Vietnam were spent cycling in the Mekong Delta. It is absolutely beautiful countryside with layer on layer of greens (gardens, rice fields, trees) crisscrossed with water ways of various widths. It is also great for cycling. It is pancake flat and many of the roads in Vietnam are very smooth and are not traveled by big trucks.
Mekong Delta is absolutely beautiful fields of rice everywhere, oddly it is on a slight angle?
On our second day of cycling in Vietnam we experienced what was (and what continues to be) some big problems. Our map (and other maps we have seen) is not detailed enough, our pronunciation of Vietnamese words is poor and the Vietnamese people are often unwilling to help us. We had spent the morning cycling along a pretty major roadway which was nice, but had some fairly major bus and truck traffic on it. While the vehicles tend to give us plenty of room, they honk all the time and they honk for prolonged periods! After awhile it is draining to have horns going off all around us so we decided early in the day to catch a boat along the river we were running parallel to. After unsuccessfully trying to find a passenger boat indicated in the Lonely Planet we came across a boat that was meant to take us down to our destination for the night. At least that is what we expected since when we said "Can Tho?" and pointed at the boat, people nodded. It was strange though that the boat appeared to be simply ferrying cars back and forth across the river (about 200 meters, 60kms shy of Can Tho). We figured that maybe it would go down stream next time, despite evidence to the contrary, and hopped on board. It proceeded to cross the river. It was at this point that we learned to never ask a question in Vietnam that can be answered with a head nod. The nod is less an answer than a gesture meant to make you leave the person alone.
One of many Mekong Delta crossings, on misc. ferries
Anyway, we were on the other side of the river and we decided to sit down and discuss our options (nah, we argued for twenty minutes); we could go back across the river, or our map indicated a mysterious highway 54 that ran along the side of the river we were currently on. It was indicated with a thinner line than was used for the highway we had previously been on, so we figured it might be a little more pleasant to cycle on. The map did not clearly indicate how we were to find this highway from where we were. After about 15 minutes of charades with half a dozen people in a coffee shop (coffee is big here, more on that in other posts I think) we were able to ascertain that the only way to Can Tho was back across the river. Highway 54 did not seem to ring any bells with anybody. Faced with this evidence we decided that the right course of action was to just find highway 54 on our own. We proceeded to travel east on the first road available to us and hope it all worked out.
The eyes on the boats are to keep the crocodiles away!
The cycling was amazing! There was only the occasional car passing, with mainly scooter traffic, and where the main highway had been surrounded on both sides with houses and businesses, we were actually able to see the fields and streams of the delta around us. After about half an hour of cycling we came upon a ferry and were able to learn that we were actually getting close to the start of Highway 54. From there the day was smooth sailing... until the end. According to the map we had about 110km of cycling that day and by the end of the day with all of the confusion to find a ferry we had probably rode about 115. At that point we should have just crossed a ferry and arrived in Can Tho. Instead, a helpful fellow on a scooter indicated that "for us" there was now a bridge. I guess by "us" he meant people that wanted to cycle another 15km to get to Can Tho, saving the ferry fee of about 25 cents (that might not be fair, the ferry might not have accepted scooters). We cycled along way around to get to the on-ramp for the bridge (it was quite a big bridge) and then the first exit to Can Tho left us several kms out of city. So that was a long day of cycling in the end. The bridge was quiet something to see though and at the top there were many couples hanging out having a romantic moment while the sun set. In contrast we spent about the time it took to change into a harder gear as we crested the top, being in rather a hurry to avoid cycling far in the dark.
One of the main reasons we were striving to arrive in Can Tho was to check out some fairly hyped up floating markets. We booked a tour immediately on arriving (something we aren't likely to do again, but were forced to as we had arrived so late. We were unable to book a same day tour the next day as the markets start early in the morning). So the next morning at 5:30 we met up with our guide at the hotel we were staying at and hopped in a boat to see the floating markets. Our guide was a young university student and it was pretty interesting talking to her (for example, though "communist" people have to pay for high school in Vietnam!) the floating markets though were a bust. It seems likely that we were brought to some pre-determined location where all the other tourists were brought and then people in boats came around and sold us things. A floating market to be sure, but not quiet the authentic experience we imagined. We were able to catch some glimpses of the market as we boated around and it was pretty neat; large boats filled to the brim with things like watermelons (watermelons are good luck at Tet, Chinese New Year, which is fast approaching), pineapples, or cabbages, while smaller boats zip around them buying things. The tour also included an unexpected visit to a rice noodle production factory which was pretty cool and a stop at a restaurant where all the food was double the usual price which was pretty uncool. Over all a frustrating experience.
Market boats, waiting to take our money
Rice paper factory, they make thousands of rice papers each day..kind of like making crepes
Shimmy-ing across a "monkey bridge" to leave the rice paper factory
After getting off the tour boat we still had a big day planned. As we were pressed for time to get to Saigon (Ho Chi Mihn City) we wanted to cover approximately 70kms in the afternoon in order explore some more of the delta. Right from the start of the ride we were pushing our luck; our tour was meant to end around 12 but did not get back till 2 (I sort of hate the guy who sold us that tour). If things had continued as they had ended the previous day though we would be going plenty fast enough to make it to our destination by nightfall, so we started off on our afternoon of cycling. Not having learned from the previous experience trying to find our way in Vietnam we decided to follow a road indicated as "to be finished in 2010" on our map. To be fair to us, the only alternative was the busiest highway in the country which would have been miserable. Anyway, with the rules of: 1) travel east 2) stay close to the river, we set off to find the "new highway"as we dubbed it. This method of traveling had us reviewing our map at every intersection (none of which were on our map, and amazingly, none of the places mentioned on the intersection markers were either), asking people for help who refused to help, and at one point visiting a cement factory (?). It wasn't until we were about 10km from the end of 40km of biking that we even realized that we had been on the "new highway" all along and that it was actually just a bunch of pre-existing roads that had been connected by the occasional bridge (as opposed to ferries).
After the end of the "new highway" we entered phase two of the afternoons travels, take a ferry and ride 30kms to get to our destination. In our ever optimistic fashion we figured that we would at max be riding into dusk since the ferry ride looked pretty short and we still had an hour of daylight. Skipping approximately the next 20 minutes which was taken up by going the wrong way and (unlike anything we had seen before, f'ing teenagers) actually being intentionally misdirected we were on the right path. It was a little funny though as the right path was pretty much the equivalent of a sidewalk back home, it seemed odd that it would even be on our map. Anyway, night was falling and it was really lovely biking down this narrow path with forest and the occasional home on both sides. There were actually fireflys around which I hadn't seen before. Sadly we came to the end of this "right" path too soon. It ran into a river.
We thought this was the end of our day..little did we know we were headed to an island...
It turns out we were only on an island! Which is pretty funny in hindsight, but really blew our minds at the time. From our map it was not clear that getting on the tiny little island had been an option and it wasn't until we google mapped it later that we were able to figure out where we had gone. Anyway, so there we were in the dark with a wide stretch of the Mekong between us and our destination. The ferry from the island to the far side had stopped running for the day by the looks of it so we started asking about guesthouses. The responses to our guest house inquiry seemed to indicate that we would have to bike back across the island and possibly catch the ferry there again to get back to the mainland so that wasn't a great option, but it looked to be our best bet. That's when a fellow on a motorbike indicated that he was going across the water too, so not sure how this feat was to be accomplished we sat down, had a coke, and waited. Soon enough our questions were answered when a fairly long boat rammed into shore. A girl hopped off and a couple hopped on with their motorbike (one of the neat things over here is that, where ever a need may exist, it seems some entrepreneur exists who will answer the need) , we loaded our bikes aboard and set off. It was a really spectacular ride, the moon was huge and really red, the water was flat, and honestly how often do you get a nighttime ride through one of the worlds major rivers. Thinking this, and feeling romantic, and thinking how lucky I was to have married a woman who would have these kinds of adventures with me I reached out hold Meg's hand. I found Meg's hands burried under her elbows, with her arms tightly held across her chest. She thought we were going to be killed. That sort of ruined my mood honestly enough, but I wasn't worried about being murdered and we got off the boat without a hitch (except paying way too much). With the island experience behind us we expected we still had 30kms to ride before the day was done, fortunately though the small town we landed in from the ferry had a really nice little guest house and we were able to call it quits after a very long day.
Romance, or death trap?
The next day was more lovely cycling in the delta, with more confusing roadways and more getting lost. In the end though we completed our tour and got a bus heading into Saigon.
*I said that mainly for effect, we have met many wonderful and helpful Vietnamese people. Just a few of our first encounters were a little off-putting.
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