Hot Hot Hot – 37 deg in the shade – 41 in the sun at 1pm
And flat flat flat
Cycling out of HCMC was as always a challenge, exciting, scary, wild, chaotic. We were on a major divided highway, with special lanes for scooters (and bikes?), but at some point wanted to take minor roads to see more of the countryside and have less traffic. Well – great idea – didn’t really work at the start – we ended up on a normal road through multiple towns with much traffic. Its tough to say what is worse sometimes.
At some point we got off the main road, at it was a lot quitter, and we had more opportunities to concentrate on the countryside and not on the traffic.
The region we cycled through was a major Dragonfruit plantation region – with every village having multiple packaging plants with huge trucks out front getting filled. I briefly stopped at a smaller one to take some pictures – as so often, the people were fascinated to see me, were smiling and waving – offered me some drangonfruit and invited me in – unfortunately, Jörg was a ways up ahead of me and I had to catch up, so I had to pass.
The whole Mekong delta is crisscrossed with multiple rivers and tributaries, which made route planning a challenging. But, there are numerous ferries that are available, and moreso, bridges are bring built at a rapid pace.
We ended up in some homestay with a number of bungalows – very primitive, but on the edge of a river absolutely serene and quiet. The bungalows were self made and had a simple but cool flair – including a relaxing area over the river to chill and hang out….. We met a number couple and single travelers from Germany with shorter and longer travel stays – the couple (Heiko and his partner) are on an (indefinite) travel plan – heading to New Zealand on the next day….
(92km / 102m)