Is that plastic bag moving?

We left India without a hitch, having spent 6 hours outside Mumbai airport, they’ll only let you in 3 hours before. Our flimsy bike boxes were shrink wrapped and off they went. We arrived in Singapore, having reverse culture shock, we wanted to roll around on the carpets they were so clean. Everything was orderly and shiny. If you look out the window in Singapore there’s a sterile order, eerily there’s not a speck or piece of litter on the ground, an un-lived-in feeling compared to the seething life of India. After a few hours of luxuriating we hopped the next flight to Ho Chi Minh (or Saigon); every place that’s been conquered has at least 2 names.
We were prepared, having read our travel book we went for the reputable taxi company and pre-paid a reasonable fair to the city. On the way out he handed his half of the receipt to the man at the ticket booth, who I saw dropped it. They were in cahoots. He made actions of payment, trying to suggest there was a toll, doing so with the worst fake laughter ever. I showed him my ticket, which he tried to snatch away. He took us into town, and ferociously complained like a whining spoiled child as he didn’t help us find our hotel. It was like living in a cheesy over-dubbed movie where he spoke Vietnamese and acted crazy and we acted crazy back in English. 5 minutes later we did find the hotel. Lisa made it very clear that he’d be getting no more money from us, with an evil stare and threats that needed no translation. So much so that he stopped complaining, asking or even looking at us. I knew her bodyguard talents would come in handy on this trip! Yay, she kicks butt.
Anyhow, that being our first mildly annoying experience in Vietnam, is was our last. The people have been warm, happy, kind, every taxi driver since then has been fair and taken a direct route. We’ve received offers of people wanting to buy us coffee who we meet while cycling. 4 times so far locals have shared food, given us fruit we’ve never tried, or bought us a little gift at the market. It touches us every time, we’ve learned to except, say thank you in Vietnamese, always share food with people around you and not always think you have to give something back.
Arriving here we immediately noticed the difference in air quality in Vietnam. Though it is still not great and people are conscientious enough to wear trendy breathing masks while scooting around on mopeds. And that’s what everyone does. There are hundreds of mopeds at any given intersection in Saigon. Crossing the street here is a different kind of art. It is done slowly, as the mopeds weave around you, and you make no sudden moves. Actually its quite safe when you get the hang of it and no one drives too fast.

We stayed 5 days in Saigon where we ate at vegetarian restaurants, organized our Cambodian Visas and visited the war remnants museum. It’s a good one, so much so that we both cried. In this place, the Americans were a horror. Terrorising the civilians and poisoning them for at least a decade to come. What a horrible, terrible, dreadful war and a sad mirror to look into.

Vietnam is enchanting in its own way and hits way closer to home. We only spent time in the most southern part of Vietnam, the Mekong Delta and my reflections speak only of this region. Its been easy to navigate, almost too easy. Vietnam is modern and no so at the same time. There is a large middle class and the cities, roads and hotels are spiffy. Homes range from solid walls with colourful exteriors to shacks on stilts patched together with tarps over hanging polluted water ways. Its a mix of two worlds between the cities and rural Vietnam.

Our presence does not seem so alien, we are not the subject of relentless staring in restaurants, nor does one worry about showing too much leg or do we seem so incredibly privileged like a couple of futuristic space aliens on shiny bikes rolling into a village. So things have toned down about ten degrees which is comfortable, but sometimes too comfortable.
We still do get children blowing kisses and waving ’hello’ at us and they still crowd around, like when we stopped to fix a flat. Here’s a picture of a group of kids Lisa taught to say nose, mouth, eye and bum in English, to many giggles. Then they taught her back in Vietnamese, in a chorus as she pointed to each body part. Precious, absolutely precious. If I hadn’t had so many flats and broken spokes I would say it was a blessing in disguise.




























Cycling itself has been a breeze. There’s usually a shoulder, its pancake flat, most people travel by bike or moped and the big trucks are used to 2-wheeled travellers generally giving lots of space. Besides my wheel our only major problem has been the heat. Its so very humid here, it’s a completely different ball game. We sweat buckets and have to drink buckets. I’ve constructed arm covers out of an old pant leg to stave off sunburn. By 11am the sun is grumpy-inducing so we’ve started leaving at 530am rather than 630am and max out at about 80km.
After leaving Saigon we had a few hard days of finding vegetarian food. With no help from the Lonely Planet we eventually learned that all we had to do was look for the word CHAY. Buddhists here eat 4 days out of the month as vegetarians, otherwise everything has meat in it. Once we figured it out, every town seemed to have at least one Chay restaurant and a few chay street stalls. We ate cheap cheap cheap!
The Vietnamese have a reputation for eating anything that crawls, flies or slithers. Deep fried sparrows are a speciality…I’m serious. A trip to the local market was always an experience, we saw things like water snakes and some large endangered molluscs. One morning we had bought some boiled eggs on the street for an early morning breakfast. When I cracked one open I noticed a thin reddish liquid leaking out. Ódd’I thought, continuing I found the egg was a partially formed chick, with a spinal cord, a large eye spot and a liver. ahhhhhhhhhhh! I hid the egg from Lisa, who can’t make it through the meat and game sections of the market.
If you order something any where, whether street stall, market or store, it goes in a plastic bag. We’ve done our best, to many bedazzled looks, practically fighting people off, to stop them from giving them to us. But there is little conscience about litter here. We’ve seen waitress clean tables by throwing the plastic bottles over the railing into the river. For many who live along a canal, is how you take out the garbage. No one looks twice, except us, as the ocean and the rivers have stopped washing the garbage away and chokes more and more back at them. One could make a HUGE global impact here, by getting India and SE Asia to deal with its garbage properly. Thought it’s a price of cheap progress (plastic) with no infrastructure.




EVERYTHING and I mean EVERYTHING goes in a plastic bag. Can you guess what he's about to do? Yes...its still alive.









Along our route we hopped over on the “Super Dong ferry” to Pho Quoc Island were we stayed a week by a beach we couldn’t swim at for jellyfish and took a snorkelling trip! The first location was beautiful, the second, kind of sad for all the fishing nets that had snared the reef, it was in obvious decline, with signs of bleaching. Even the tour company decided to take a piece! We regretted not asking if the company had an environmental policy before heading out. Language barriers can be problematic at times like these.

We plan to write a few letters about this one! Luckily some areas are protected, though they do not exist in a vacuum and the reefs still battle with the effects of pollution, poaching, global warming and litter.
















I couldn’t have imagined the beauty of the reef, it was an emotional experience.












































Then...We headed for the Cambodian Border….
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Here’s a posting of our route through the Mekong delta region for interested parties:

Saigon-My Tho - 70km
May Tho-Ben Tre - 20km
Ben-Tre to Vinh Long - 80km
Vinh Long to Can Tho - 34km
Can Tho- Loung Xuyen - 65km
Loung Xuyen-Rach Gia - 80km
Rach Gia-Doung Dong, Phu Quoc Island - ferry ride plus 18km
Return as above - 18km
Rach Gia to Ha Von - 72km
Ha Von to Ha Tien - 20km

Total Days in Vietnam = 20
Total for Southern Vietnam = 477km

Finally lots of continuous riding!