Mekong Delta, Day 1
We were picked up in the morning by our driver and our guide. It was just the two of us and them cycling through the Mekong Delta for three days and then taking the boat up the river and crossing into Cambodia.
We were a bit nervous as we didn’t really know quite what to expect in terms of distances and how we’d cope with the heat as it was very, very The bikes were pretty new hybrid bikes and our driver would take all our gear whilst we cycled. It was like having our own support team – brilliant!
After driving for a couple of hours we stopped and started cycling towards Mytho. It was great once we settled in to a steady pace and we passed through villages with everyone waving and saying hello and loads of children running out to see us and say hello. They were so excited to see us it was hilarious and sometimes we’d pass a house and hear a chorus of hello’s but not be able to see where it was coming from, only to spot some kids up a tree/in the river/in their house and they wouldn’t stop saying hello until we waved back.
After a couple of hours, we arrived in Mytho for our boat trip on the Mekong Delta where we visited an island and saw sweets being made out of coconut and tasted many different types of tropical fruit and we took a sampan (a rowing boat) back along small canals. The Mekong Delta is simply massive – it was more like being on a huge lake than a river at times and the geography of it was a bit confusing as it splits off into many tributaries etc so we weren’t really sure exactly which bit we were cycling on at any one time.
We stopped for lunch and then took the boat back to the van and drove on for an hour or so before stopping and cycling on to CaiBe. This was really good cycling as it was totally flat and we went down dirt tracks, crossed lots of monkey-bridges and passed through some really rural villages. It was lovely cycling at dusk and was so peaceful. We took a couple of local ferries across more tributaries on the river until we arrived at CaiBe where we boarded a boat to take us to across the river (where it was 1.5km wide!) to BinhHoaPhuoc and AnBinh island to a guesthouse.
The guesthouse was a very basic traditional building on stilts at the side of the river. It was beautiful but it was boiling – there wasn’t a breath of wind at all and it was stifling. We had some well earned beers having cycled about 25Km, watched the sunset over the Mekong and had some delicious dinner before falling into our camp beds and pulling down the mosquito nets.
It was at this point, that the evening river noise started! First of all it was the incessant cockerels crowing, then the local dogs barking and fighting, then the insects all started and so it continued…
