Well I tried with the letter style of writing, I am in Nam, don’t think it would work for everyday, but you have to try these things. I had looked at the map and thought I only had 70km to ride today, sweet an easy ride, the city was madness, you really have to watch in every direction at one here, nearly crashed this morning because I was looking around and a dog ran out in front of me, locked up both wheels, did manage to miss it though.
After biking for 7km I was still in the city but made a left turn north, onto what I thought was 30km straight road, it would turn out to be 57km of straight road, dead straight, not even a hint of a turn, few small rises but that was just over bridges. After finally leaving the city and being on open road I had a guy come up besides me and start to have a chat, we must have talked for about 20km riding side by side, have to say here his speedo was showing 30km/h the whole time. His name was Thi and he invited me to stop in at his parents restaurant which was at a cross road I would hit further along. Sounded like a good idea and that would be my lunch break and then I would only have 50km that after noon.
I pulled into the restaurant at 11am, thought I would stop for 1 hour and the head on to Cam Tho, I meet up with Thi again and ordered some food, I have to say it was really really good, the flavors’ of the food were sublime, it makes my mouth water now just thinking about it now. I chatted with Thi for a while, he is a interesting young fello, they really all do look to the west as being the big shining light in the sky.
I did not ruin it for him and told him at home I have three cars and two houses with 6 wifes, who all have their own cars and I have a TV screen that makes a truck look small. No I would not do that, told him the only thing I own is sitting in front of him, my bike and trailer. When I decided to leave his dad came out and asked me if I knew anything about Vietnams history, he said if I come to the country I should know what has happened. For some reason I think he wanted to have a rave at a westerner. I however do have a little knowledge, yes just a little.
I think really he is still pissed at the Americans for what they did to the people of the south at the end of the war, I think he may have been one who was persecuted by the north Vietnamese after the Americans pulled out and left the south high and dry, good one America. Lucky I was leaving he seemed pretty heated up about it. I give him his due though, if what I have read about happened to him he has a lot to be bitter about. It has made me slightly more interested to check out the war museum in Ho Chi Min City. Have to point out here lots of locals still call Ho Chi Min City, Saigon.
The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful, I did get into a argument with some guy how was trying to charge me a over the top price for a toilet that he did not even own. It was a bit funny really, I nipped in to us a loo at a gas station and when I came out this guy asked for money, now if he had gone lower then what he said he might have been lucky but he wanted to much. So I told him I was not going to pay that much, It was only over about 25cUS but still, I am no ATM.
After about 10 minutes of really getting know were because he could not speak much English and my Vietnamese is next to nothing, I suggested we find someone to translate he seem to think this was not such a good idea, especially when I started to walk towards the guys working at the garage, he thought it was time to let me go. At this point he went back to his job with his mates laughing at him.
I ended up down by the water front and found a hotel for the night, some guy when I arrived tried to push a whole day site seeing trip on me, he got the cold shoulder very quickly as I was not really in the mood, I was hot, sweaty and tired and all I wanted was to get to a room and have a shower and relax before I went out for dinner.
I wondered toward the water front and started chatting with this lady there, there is a new bridge being built over part of the Mekong river, it looked really cool and I thought it would be nice to have a closer look, I did not realize she was a tout at the time, she went over and talked to this guy who just seemed to be walking passed with a group of locals, well lets just say they happened to be going out on a boat to see the bridge.
She asked me if I wanted to go and said it was for free, so you have to wonder now what she wants, so much suspicion. She touts for the floating market trip in the morning, we negotiated a cost for that, which with a little more haggling I could have got it cheaper but I was getting a free ride to have a look at the bridge so let her off. The bridge is pretty remarkable and I enjoyed my sunset run around the bridge. I think I have some nice photos of it. So I am now all booked in to see the floating Market in the morning, there is another one north of here and will see that tomorrow on my way towards My Tho my next port of call.
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