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This first blog post covers the initial few days of my cycle through the beautiful Mekong Delta in Vietnam as I headed towards the Cambodian border.  As it covers a few days you may want to stick the kettle on as…. there are a lot of adventures to go through.

I have been more than a little lax in keeping up with my blog posts and after two weeks on the road I have actually written nothing (unless you count the post that I wrote apologising for a lack of updates…)

I have posted short updates via social media but nothing substantial which really adds any real sense of background or cultural reference to the pictures.  So, as I sit here next to the lapping waters of a coastal village called Bang Taboon I will endeavor to update you on my trip so far to-date.

For those of you who have already been following my adventures on social media then you may have already seen some of this information but please bear with me as my main aim of the next few posts is to bring my blog, facebook, twitter, youtube, tumblr and website feeds all to the same point in time.

Final preperations

After more than 6 months of planning there was still loads to do in the final few days before I left.  I needed to quit my job, get my final vaccinations at the local hospital, sell my motorbike and move house.   The first 3 went off without a hitch:

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Getting ready for the British International School end of year party

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Final vaccinations at Institute Pasteur Hospital, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

My motorbike was sold to an Australian tourist called Jim.  He is retired and currently riding the bike around northern Vietnam.

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Sym 150 cc

Moving on the other hand did not quite go as smoothly…..  For those of you who have not been following every turn of my preparations (not sure why you would have missed any!!!!!) then you will know that the move did not quite go as planned.

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Saigon Van removals arrived on time and packed up the house.

There are many things that are amazing about living in Vietnam – the people, their generosity, the food, their sense of family, the weather, bad karaoke and the list goes on. However, independent thought is not high up on this list.

The movers from Saigon Van arrived on time to pack up our house and move everything to Deirbhle’s new flat. Although she wouldn’t be living in the flat until August it had been agreed that we could move our furniture and belongings in now. We have amassed quite a bit of stuff since living here and when packed it was a couple of truck loads – about 50 boxes plus furniture and 3 sofas etc. So not a small amount of stuff.

Once the movers had packed they left saying that they would phone me in a few hours to let me know that all the furniture and boxes were in the flat.  On queue the supervisor rang about 5pm to tell me all of our stuff had been delivered into the flat as arranged and that the packers had now left but asked if I knew that there was already a family living in the flat and so it had been a tight squeeze to get all of our stuff in there.

As you can imagine I was speechless and went to the flat. When i arrived there was this poor Vietnamese family sat on the sofa with all of our boxes and furniture taking up the whole of their flat. As you can imagine they were not best pleased.

I have no idea why the landlord had agreed that we could move our stuff in, why the family let the movers deliver our stuff into the flat in the first place, or why the removal company never thought it was a bit strange. Lets just say that it took a fair few hours to sort this one out as the packers had gone home thinking their job was done.

The eventual outcome is that our stuff is now safely in storage and the family have their flat to themselves until their contract ends on the 1st of August.  Only in Vietnam…..  (I think that Deirbhle will definitely need to sell some of the furniture when she gets back to Vietnam) ?

Before moving on, a special shout out must go to Nicola Tingey who let me stay in her flat for a week in Ho Chi Minh City whilst I was essentially homeless and waiting to start my cycling adventures.

The saddest part of all of this for me though was saying goodbye to my wife as she headed to Europe for a holiday. The next time that I will see Deirbhle will be at the end of October when she flies in to join me for a weeks holiday somewhere in Indonesia which will be fantastic. This is 16 weeks that we will be apart and in the past I don’t think that we have ever been apart for more than a week which will be very weird to say the least.

When Deirbhle flies into Indonesia this will also coincide with the end of the Asian leg of my cycle as when my wife leaves to return to work in Vietnam I will take a flight to New Zealand.

In a way there are benefits to becoming jobless, homeless and temporarily wifeless – I get to lose the mundane stresses associated with everyday life. (only kidding about the wife bit)  Instead, probably the only stresses that I may have will be trying to choose the best route through a country without missing the ‘highlights’ and finding somewhere to sleep each evening.  I am not overly concerned about finding accommodation though as people are very generous to cyclists and if all else fails I always have a tent with me.

Fully loaded and ready to roll

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The bike (still unnamed) fully loaded

With this new sense of freedom on the 4th of July 2016 I was all packed and my pedals finally turned as I set off on my 25000 km cycling adventure.  The bike weighs in at a sturdy 16kg with racks and the luggage another 18kg.  Add 70kg for me and I now have a fair weight to pedal around.  This is where all the triathlon and Ironman training should come in handy.  For those of you who have not read about my getting fit exploits in the run up to this adventure please click here

The road out of the city was very busy and after a couple of hours I had arrived at Ben Luc.  This is where the group that I cycled with in the city, Saigon Velominati Cycling Club, stop for a coffee and so I thought it apt that my first stop should be here so that I could toast them with a Café Su Da.

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This is the cafe that the Saigon Velominati Cycling Club stop at most weekends

Once I was past Ben Luc it was time to get off the highway and take the back roads into the Mekong Delta. It was so nice to be finally underway that I got carried away taking photos and making videos that I lost all track of time.  My plan for day 1 was to cycle 100km to Phu Dinh in the Mekong Delta and stay with friends from work – Uyen and Phuong who I used to work with at BIS in Ho Chi Minh City; the plan was that I would arrive by 5pm.  I eventually arrived over 2 hours late having got completely lost on the way and needed to be rescued by Uyen and Phuong who found me on their motorbike and guided me the last 10km to the house.

The following two videos are the main reason that I was so late.  They are fairly long at 14 minutes each but well worth a watch if you have the time:

When I arrived I was given the VIP room in the house as it was the only one which had air conditioning which I thought was very so nice of the family.  As I was so late arriving the girls set about preparing a feast on the bbq while I went to get a shower.

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Phuong (left) and Uyen (right) preparing the feast

Once we had finished eating and I had shared my adventures with the girls it was fairly late and so we hit the hay.

The following morning we were all up bright and early and decided to head out to a restaurant for breakfast.  In Vietnam, it is fairly normal to see 4 people on the same motorbike but Uyen is 6 months pregnant and so we decided to ride separate motorbikes to breakfast with the girls on one and me on another.  Uyen had to go off in search of a motorbike for me to use as the family only have one but within 5 minutes she had returned with the neighbours motorbike.

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Despite Uyen being 6 months pregnant we spent the next day having a fantastic time zipping around the villages and country side on motorbikes, visiting temples and learning how to chop coconuts. (see video below – 12 minutes)

I have known Uyen, whose house I was staying at, for more than 5 years as she is head of Human Resources at the school where I used to work.  She has done so much for both Deirbhle and I since we moved to Vietnam and has had to put up with being shouted at on a regular basis by our crazy landlord for the last 18 months.  Again, I would just like to say thank you Uyen for all that you have done for us.

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Last year, Uyen got married and I can’t quite believe that the next time that I will see her she will have a 1 year old running around.

After a brilliant couple of days with the girls it was time to get on with the little matter of cycling around the world, and so I bid goodbye to Uyen and Phuong and headed further into the Mekong Delta.  My destination that evening was a Cai Nguyen Village where I would again stay with relatives of a lady that I used to live with in Ho Chi Minh City.

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Khoa and I at my final end of Year Party at work

*** no idea what is going on with this photo as it is displayed correctly in the master version of this post – Fraser???? ***

My journey to Cai Ngang was what I called my first ‘proper’ days cycling – there was lots of mud, I got lost a few times and was given food often. Days like this on a bike are the reason that I gave up my job to go cycling.  It really was a brilliant day to be alive.

Khoa who had arranged for me to stay with her sister in Cai Ngang was not able to come and meet me so instead she had arranged for her brother, Toan, to meet me in the nearest town and escort me the final few kilometres to the village where I would stay.  Yet again, I was running late but this time it was because I had been dodging torrential rain all day.

I had tried to phone Toan to let him know but he could not understand me as he spoke very little English.  Instead, we conversed by text as despite his lack of verbal language he had a very fluent written vocabulary.  I eventually arrived in the town just as it was going dark and Toan had texted me to say that I should ride through the centre of town and he would find me. I thought that this was a bit strange but it worked and we managed to meet up.

Toan then escorted me on his motorbike to the village which was about 4km away.  It turns out that I had cycled past the entrance to the village 20 minutes earlier en route to meeting Toan.   When we arrived at the house the family came out to greet me with the biggest of smiles.  Khoa had already told me that nobody in the village spoke English but this did not matter as the evening past with lots of visits from Khoa’s relatives and some amazing food.

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Dinner time – pork, rice, fish, eggs and chicken followed by Jack fruit

When it was bedtime there were only two beds in the house and the family gave one of them to me and they all slept together on the other bed which was very humbling.

In the morning after breakfast the men of the house showed me around the property that they lived on.  One feature of just about every house in the villages that I have cycled through is that they have at least one fish pond, and often two or three.

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This house had 2 fairly large fish ponds

What I din’t realise though is that the fish pond not only provides food to eat but is the sewage disposal system.  In the picture above there is a wooden structure in the top left of the pond.  This is the toilet for having a poo.  You squat on two wooden planks about a meter above the water and your waste drops into the pond.  The fish do the rest to dispose of the sewage.   If you just need a wee then you find a tree on the boundary of the property.  I think that in future I may just avoid eating the fish when visiting villages.

Following my tour of the property the men of the father and son took me on a tour of the village.  Below is the video that I filmed whilst they showed me around.  (12 minutes)

I know that this post is now way too long but I hope that you haven’t quite lost the will to live yet.  I want to get caught up with my posts and so I am going to carry on until I get to the border with Cambodia which is now just 2 days away. If you put the kettle on earlier then you may want to pause here and go get another.

Okay – lets go with the final two days.   The most amazing part of this trip for me is that every pedal turn literally brings a new sight, smell or adventure.  I really do set off each morning with no plan other than a direction that I will head in.  I don’t book accommodation or even know how far I will cycle which is half the thrill.  I know that not everybody likes to travel this way but I hope that I am still doing this at the end of the trip as it really is a brilliant way to live.

My day on the bike when I left the village was a bit like this – a series of random encounters throughout the day.  The video below shows a few of these: (14 minutes)

I was now in spitting distance of Chau Doc and the border crossing into Cambodia.  I had originally arranged to meet two other cyclists here, Fraser and Trinh, who were on there own cycling adventure around the world.  However, as I had not really taken a direct route to the border, and had deviated from my ‘planned’ route a fair bit, I was running late.  They had already crossed the border and so would wait for me in Kampot which was a town about 100 km away.

On my final run into Chau Doc I suddenly realised that I had no passport photos which I would need to obtain the visa into Cambodia the following morning. It really doesn’t matter how experienced a traveller you are as there will always be times when you forget the basics.

It was past 5pm as I arrived into Chau Doc and when I realised I literally stopped and asked the first person I saw.  The person I stopped to ask spoke no english (and why would he) but knew a friend who did and went to fetch him.  As has been the way throughout this trip his friend literally stopped what he was doing to give up an hour of his life to help me out. Please watch the video below and see how they turned a wet cyclist into a businessman with the click of a mouse (7 minutes)

Now that I had everything that I needed to get into Cambodia the next morning I set off bright and early for the border.

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At the Vietnamese / Cambodian border crossing

Throughout my cycle through the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam the people have been so generous to me.  I was constantly given drinks or asked to join the family meal as I cycled random country lanes.  This final day was no exception and if you have given up watching the videos by now then please just watch the first couple of minutes of this final video to see what I mean by the amazing generosity that people can show to a complete stranger. (6 minutes)

And that’s it folks.  This was my adventures through the Mekong Delta of Vietnam.  I hope that this post has given you a snapshot of the amazing time I had.  For those of you who have already been following my journey on social media then it may have given some context to my adventures that you don’t always get via a facebook update.

I am sure that there are lots of spelling and grammar mistakes in this but I have literally written this during and after my dinner.  It is now late and so I need to get to bed in order to get on with cycling another 100 km in the morning.  Whether I actually get this far only time will tell what adventures await me in the morning.

Thanks for reading this and I hope that you have enjoyed it even though it is way too long.  As I said at the beginning I have been more than a little lax in keeping up with my blog posts and after two weeks on the road I had actually written nothing.  I aim over the next couple of days to get my blog caught up and so tomorrow I will endeavour to pull together a post which gives you the highlights of my 500 km trip through Cambodia and should let you know if I ever did manage to catch up with Fraser and Trinh.

Please take a look through the videos on my website as there are more there than I have included here. If you click on this link it will take you there.

Thanks for reading and if you cycle – ride safe.

Cheers

Stewart

www.cyclingstew.com

Cycling through the Mekong Delta, Vietnam
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