Bullet points
-After cycling for the last 12 months we decided enough was enough and we simply stopped cycling. Just like that we were finished!
-We caught a few buses and enjoyed a cruisy final week in Ho Chi Minh City in Southern Vietnam
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After
dropping out of the Cardamom mountains near to the Cambodia-Thailand border we
couldn’t help but question- What on earth are we doing here? With less than two
weeks until our flight home from Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam we had ambitiously
headed a few hundred kilometres in the wrong direction and now found ourselves
needing to cross Cambodia and Vietnam’s Mekong Delta with little spare time to
relax and enjoy the last days of our journey. So with that in mind we got stuck
in and hammered out a couple of big days before wisdom prevailed and we opted
for some public transport in order to get back on the front foot!
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| Classic Cambodian public transport |
Border
crossings have always proven to be fascinating experiences, occasionally
stressful, sometimes hilarious, often entertaining, always exciting.
Re-entering Vietnam after two weeks in Cambodia was as big a contrast as any
border we had ever crossed. Thatched bamboo housing gave way to concrete brick
and tilt slab, quiet rural scenes were replaced by chaotically busy urban
sprawl, empty broken and bumpy roads were soon smoothed and filled with the
quintessential Vietnamese motorbike mass! Vietnam, when contrasted with
Cambodia, suddenly seemed like a land of plenty.
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| Re-entering the wonderful chaos that is Vietnam! |
The
plan was to gain some time by bussing to Can Tho on the Mekong Delta in
Southern Vietnam, and to complete our year of cycling adventure with a crusiy
four day ride up to Ho Chi Minh. The vision was a glorious final section,
perhaps riding into the city with crowds of fans cheering us on as the sun set
on another day and on our journey. In reality it all turned out a little
different. We just stopped biking. We departed Can Tho, rode 10km out of town,
got disorientated on an unmarked road, stopped into a café for a drink and a
team meeting and decided to stop. We were pretty happy with all that the year
had given us, we’d had a little taste of relaxation and we liked the flavor. We
were happy to put the bikes away and have a holiday for our final week out of
New Zealand. Just like Forrest Gump stopping running, we stopped biking. We
turned back, rode the final glorious pedal strokes back into town, checked back into the hotel we’d just checked
out of, much to the amusement of the staff, and entered into our new life of
relaxation and luxury!
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| The cafe where it was decided the ride was complete. |
So instead
of another bike ride our final week consisted of a wonderful boat ride
exploring some of the floating markets and the myriad of canals around Can
Tho, indulging in the vast array of fine foods available in Ho Chi Minh City
and wandering it’s parks and museums and meeting distant relatives. Amongst all
this we reveled in the celebratory vibes at the culmination of this very fine
year spent exploring this landmass and the hugely exciting anticipation of our return home.
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| Cai Rang Floating Market. Mekong River Delta. |
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| Phong Dien Floating Market |
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| Classic Mekong Delta produce and attire! |
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| Canals near Can Tho |
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| Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) by night. |
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| Police in Ho Chi Minh are currently trying to clear all business from the footpaths. They confiscate any restaurant furniture found on the footpaths. In a cheeky act of resistance the bar owners have gotten one step ahead of the Police, the furniture was all taken inside, for those of us outside we were all offered a piece of cardboard to sit on! |
