Day 10 – All about the water

#vietnam #travel #adventure

Well today started off with a bit too much excitement for our liking. I checked my phone to find out that my friend and house sitter, had locked herself into my flat and had to enlist the help of my bestfriend to be rescued and released. 3hrs she was stuck on the topfloor, poor thing!

Next up, we found out that our own bikes had been refused entry in to Vietnam (during transit to New Zealand) and sent back to the UK. Apparently customs lost the paperwork, but a quick email to Packandsend(Cambridge) revealed they are already on the case and the have the bikes back en route. we’ll see them in Auckland in the not too distant future 🤞.

And lastly, I managed to swallow one of my teeth during breakfast (I suggested buying a sieve to try and retrieve the tooth, but there seemed little appetite from all concerned :bloke). Thankfully it’s just an overlay, but I guess I’ll need to get that sorted in New Zealand. So that turned out to be an expensive breakfast Fortunately, there’s a retired dentist on our team, Martin, and he has offered to help if need be.

Thankfully things calmed down once we were back on the bikes and we were straight out into the general madness of Vietnam. Today was all about the rivers, we covered a reasonable amount of ground by the way of our usual bikes (60km) plus two ferry crossings and a boat trip.

The Mekong Delta is made up from a series of 9 different rivers, known locally as the nine dragons. So apart from the main ferry crossings, we also crossed many small bridges along the way. We had a brief stop to look at one of the fisheries (these were catfish, being moved to a bigger pond. The guide told us they can live for 3 days out of water and are very tolerant to being moved 5 minutes up the road, in a crate, on the back of a scooter!! :bloke).

 There was also time for a quick lie down for some of the team at one of the rest stops.

Lunch stop today was cooked by a local family for us at one of the homes along the river.

The washing up area, typical for houses on the river.

The river ways are a fascinating mix of beauty and rubbish. It is such a beautiful country but so full of rubbish, mainly plastic and this is especially evident along the river. It’s such a shame (Vietnamese gvt have just started a program to reduce the amount of plastic waste :bloke) .

 You can see how the houses are built on stilts to accommodate the rise in water levels.

Apart from the noise, travelling through these villages with their tiny roads, you really get a sense of the smells too. Everything from traffic fumes, burning plastic and so much food being cooked by the roadside (and not all of it pleasant).

Our last boat of the day was to take us to a homestay. Something the local families do to bring in money and offer an experience to the foreigners. Our homestay was on an small island in the delta and we were not sure what to expect. We were all thinking along the lines of 18 hammocks in a room and one toilet if we were lucky. How wrong were we!?!?!

The place is amazing! Apparently this is an upmarket residence, and they are not joking. All the couples had their own double rooms, with the singles sharing twin rooms. Each room had a beautiful indoor/outdoor bathroom. But the icing on the cake was the outdoor courtyard shower – It was beautiful.

The family put on one of the best meals we’ve had while we’ve been here (elephant ear fish :bloke), and believe me, we’ve eaten well. The food has been amazing and I think there’s no danger of any of us having lost any weight since we got here. For those that wanted to, there was a chance to join in and help/learn to cook with the family.

It was a lovely evening and apart from the food, there was an honesty bar of beers and wine plus the family also like their homebrew rive wine… We were given several rounds of shots, the first couple was aniseed flavoured, I lost track a bit after those. Inevitably there was a bit of a slow start and some hangovers at breakfast.