Bikelihood

There are 90 million people in Vietnam, and more than 20 million motorbikes (bikes). The bike is the most common symbol of Vietnamese modern life, and an essential means to making a living.

As wheels turn through sun and rain, dust and dirt, they carry with them the owner's search for hope for everlasting happiness. 

The bike carries a small world on its back. People burden it with everything and anything they can.

Live pigs! Yep, all 4 of these were strapped on that bike!!

The bike is also used to transport the family from - A to B, and the most people we saw on a bike was five people, two adults and three children - three people was, however, the average.

The technical limiters of the bike doesn't matter, and neither do traffic laws. Driven by a mission to better our lives, which we all share, Vietnamese people 'bike' their living, knowing that their loved ones are depending upon the wages of their daily journeys.

The bike's fate is linked to its owner. Many in Vietnam draw their last breath on their bike. It is easy to see why:

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There are no space for parking the bikes on the road, so they take up most of the sidewalk forcing the pedestrians out on the street. They even block store entrances.

The bike-load has become the bikelihood....

The Mekong Delta On Two Wheels

We had booked the 3 day/2 nights 81km bicycling tour with Sinh Balo Adventure Travel, and we were joined by Peter and Margo from Australia. A nice small group.

The Mekong River is one of the world's great rivers and its delta is one of the world's largest. 'Me' means mother and 'kong' means river. The Mother River starts in Tibet, and flows 4500km through China, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. It splits into several branches close to the mouth, and the Vietnamese call that Song Cuu Long - River of Nine Dragons. 

We drove by bus a couple of hours south of HCMC (Ho Chi Minh City-Saigon) to My Tho, where we boarded a boat, and went out on one of the two main branches of the mighty river.

The river boats have eyes in the front of the boat, to scare away the river monster. It works, as we didn't see any!

A lot of people are farming fish, and living on the fish farms.

Although the area is rural, it is one of the most densly populated regions in Vietnam. We visited a private home in Cai Lay to get an idea of how people lived on land. We were served some delicious snacks. The fruit here is so fresh and tasty.

They predominantly use wood when cooking as electricity is very expensive.

We then sailed to a restaurant where we had deep fried Elephant Ear fish for lunch.

Andy and Pete was entertained in the washroom......

We then jumped on the bikes, and went along the many canals and past homes. We had been saying the tourist, "No thank you" so many times a day for a long time. It was very refreshing to say "Hello" many times a day, in reply to the friendly villagers' greeting, when we biked by.

The Delta is also called the 'rice bowl' of Vietnam, as it is possible to grow rice three times a year here, which compares well to other parts of Vietnam. For example, in the Highlands of Northern Vietnam, it is only possible to have one harvest. Vietnam is the world's second largest exporter of rice, after India, but the quality is not as good.

We passed a market, and somebody was buying live snakes to make snake wine. Snakes sell for VD140,000 / $7 Cad per kilo.

We then put the bikes on a boat,

and sailed to our homestay for the night on Cai Be island. It had been an interesting day with a lot of varied activities and insights.

The folowing day we biked around Cai Be island. 

 

The cocks are for sale and used for cock fighting. They are kept separate, fed special food, to keep them in fine condition.

Getting the hang of Vietnamese life-style.

We also visited a Bhuddist temple,

and shopped for dinner......... Price $3.50 for 1/2kg of rats.

for Andy and Pete - the brave men! 

But first, time for a well-deserved beer by the river,

and a cooking lesson at our homestay for the night.

The rats in the Mekong Delta live off rice, and thus, according to the locals, taste of rice. Andy and Pete found the deep fried rats tasty. Margo and I didn't have the guts to taste them! Andy said they tasted pretty good-even better than chicken!

Up early the next morning to see the morning life on the river,

and visit the floating market. The market is getting smaller and smaller. People are taking their produce to HCMC because they can get a better price for them there.

This is how the boats advertise what they are selling on board. So carrots on the flagpole, yep, they're selling carrots!

Then we sailed into a very narrow canal, and had to take the shade-sail off the boat in order to pass under the bridge.

Back on the bikes for a 12km ride to a Ba Cang and the CaoDai temple.  CaoDai is a universal faith mixing Catholicism, Hinduism, Taoism and Buddhism. It has the principle that all religions have one same divine origin, which is God, or Allah, or the Tao or the Buddha, one same ethic based on love and justice, and are just different manifestations of one same truth. An interesting concept.

Drying bananas in the sun.

When we reached Can Tho we had a very refreshing cane sugar juice or two.

It was a great trip, our guide was excellent, and we had a lot of fun. Absolutely recommendable, and a nice finale for our time in Vietnam.

'Good Morning, Vietnam'

We flew from Da Nang (north of Hoi An) to Ho Ci Minh City, and used the city as our base for the trips to Mui Ne and the Mekong Delta.

Ho Chi Minh City has a population of 7.4 million, and is a very busy and cosmopolitan city. Saigon was originally part of the kingdom of Cambodia, and served as the capital of the Republic of Vietnam from 1956 until 1975 when it was renamed Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC).

HCMC is not a pretty city, but you can find all the designer stores, as well as the fancy hotels. We stayed in District 1, which is where the majority of the sights are located. Saigon was captured by the French in 1859, and they built the Notre Dame Cathedral.

We visited the Reunification Palace, which is a quite modern building.

The first communist tanks to arrive in Saigon rumbled here on the morning of 30 April 1975, and it is as if time has stood still since then.

After crashing through the wrought-iron gates, a soldier ran into the building and up the stairs to unfurl a Viet Cong flag from the balcony.

The palace has various meeting and reception rooms, the president's living quarters and a bunker. The bunker has a telecommunications centre, war room with many of the original maps on the walls and a network of tunnels. The palace is still being used for official receptions.

This guy is tapping into the city's electricity supply to run is key-making business - he was gone when we walked by later (look closely you will see the illegal wire)!

Ee

Andy would do almost anything to prolong our trip....

Believe it or not, but walking around a corner we bumped into the British couple, Darryl and Jen, whom we met at Kopan monastery in Nepal, in Hue and in Hoi An. At Starbucks we met the four Australians whom stayed at Phong Nha Farmstay at the same time as us, and later we saw the New Zealand couple we shared a berth with on the train from Sa Pa to Hanoi. There are 7.4 million people in HCMC, so what are the chances running into somebody you know? 

Just around the corner from our hotel was this Danish restaurant serving Danish beer and meals - we just had beer! Robert Storm Petersen was a Danish cartoonist, writer, animator, illustrator, painter and humorist. 

After our Mekong bicycle trip and before our long journey to New Zealand, we had a great Vietnamese massage. Don't try this at home....

Our five weeks in Vietnam had been full of diverse experiences from north to south, and even though there was a lot of places we didn't see, we left with the feeling that we had done Vietnam. We both loved Vietnam, but we found it very contradictory, that a communist country could be so capitalistic. The people were wonderful and very proud of their country. We both felt that Vietnam was an emerging  country that is going places. You only have to visit here, to see how far they have come since the American War.