Thrills, spills and muddy Mekong madness! (80km)

Short entry today cos I'm completely knackered!! Up again bright and early at 6am, ready to set off at 7.30am. Cycled out of Trah Vinh and our first stop was this beautiful Buddhist temple in the forest. Was quite a bizarre blend at times of the ancient and the modern (an emerging theme!) - the old, old temple buildings set against a Pepsi table umbrella, rock music blaring from a radio and the Buddha inside the temple surrounded by multicoloured neon lights! Apparently neon is a fairly recent thing in Vietnam (only about 20yrs or so) so they use it with gay abandon! (the Vietnamese LOVE their kitsch!)

Today's ride was pretty long at 80km. We broke it up with a fair number of stops but it was still quite tiring. It was so much my legs hurting as my wrists, hands and shoulders from being in the same position for so long. Kept trying to stretch to ease it out a bit, but I guess its just my body getting used to it, so hopefully it'll lessen off as the week goes on. Remember what I said yesterday - its only a matter of time? Well, yep - I was right! Today had two falls from the bike - the first one when we stopped at a junction and I just couldnt get my sodding cleat out of the left pedal in time (cos they're new, they're really tight, so I ended up riding with my right shoe clipped out). I was a bit bashed up but not too bad (although I think I'm in for some impressive bruises!). The next time was about 20mins later when we hit this big patch of Mekong mud (by this stage we had left the paved roads and were going through the beautiful patchwork of rice paddy fields). Having never really done mountain biking before, I had absolutely no idea of technique, so I was a bit doomed before I began really. Coupled with my cleat issue, it was pretty much guaranteed I would hit the mud, wobble, slither and then topple over in slow motion, ending up slithering down the bank with my bike on top of me! Fortunately, I stopped short of the Mekong river (that would have been bad) and nothing was damaged (neither me nor my camera, thank goodness!). The inevitable spill over, I could actually relax a little - some of the other riders also gave me some tips on how to actually ride the damn thing (its a bit like horse riding, really), so that really did help a lot too.

The ride today was very pretty and I feel I now have an intimate knowledge of how rice is produced! The stuff was everywhere - all spread out on tarps across the road to dry and, even though we were told it was fine to ride through it, you couldnt help thinking they got heartily miffed off with all these people messing up their carefully brushed and combed rice piles! Along with the rice paddies (which were the most vibrant green i've ever seen), we also saw many different style Khmer homes and temples, built in amongst the many tributaries of the Mekong. God knows how many bridges we crossed!

We kept riding til finally reaching our destination at 4pm for a late lunch of Beef Pho which was absolutely delicious (and well earned!). Again, with only about 10mins to go, we got caught in the rain and COMPLETELY soaking! Ah well - at least its warm. After lunch, we all trooped back on the vans for the 2hr drive to Can Tho, a large trading city. After all the rural quiet of the last couple days (moped horns aside), it was a bit of an assault to the senses to be back in a town! Was lots of traffic and we sat in a queue for the ferry for a good half hour. But finally made it to the Saigon Can Tho hotel around 6.30pm, so it was a long day but another very rewarding one. Dinner is in about half an hour - I could crawl into bed now, I'm so tired, so I hope I dont fall asleep in my noodles!!