Kris en Martine Meandering the Mekong Delta with Van the Man

Naast al het eten en drinken, hebben we ook nog de tijd gevonden om fietsen te huren aan 1$ per dag. We zijn er recht mee naar het strand gefietst, 7km van het centrum, waar we zalig een dagje onder een rieten parasol hebben gelegen op een prachtig wit strand met palmbomen. Om nog meer jaloers te worden, kijk vooral naar de foto's. :-)

Nu zijn we een vierdaagse fietstocht aan't doen in de Mekong Delta met Vietnam Cycling Tours. Maar dat komt, uiteraard, in een volgende blog.

Vietnam Backroads Lonely Planet

we did some wonderful bike trips with this travel agency and we loved it. Recommended operator that runs small-group, multi-day cycling tours of the delta backroads. http://mekongbiketours.com

Mekong Bike Tours in Vietnam
The 06:00 flight from Da Nang to Ho Chi Minh City was cheaper than the day-long train. Although train journeys in Vietnam are a wonderful way to see more of the countryside, we decided to pass up this particular one. We had to catch a bus to Cambodia the next day and I refused to compromise one particular outing in the south of Vietnam.

It wasn’t the Cu Chi Tunnels, the war history or the city life of the capital. It was a sentence I found, somewhere deep into a string of blog posts and travel articles about the region. It read: Cycle the backroads of the Mekong Delta.

The day started with a quick stop at a tiny baguette shop in Ho Chi Minh City for a cheap, on-the-go breakfast (apparently the French didn’t take their recipes with them when they departed). The van headed to Tan An town on the city’s outskirts. We parked along a nondescript dirt road. Three boys were happily playing marbles in the sand.

We mounted our bikes and peddled after Van, our guide, who grew up in these parts. The road ended and a narrow, cement pathway lead in between single storey houses flanked by farmland

This is the Mekong River Basin, an extensive region that crosses into both Cambodia and Thailand. According to the Mekong River Commission for Sustainable Development, the agriculture here provides food security and livelihoods for approximately 60% of the Mekong River Basin’s population. Although there is a definite trend toward commercial agriculture, especially here in Vietnam, currently subsistence and small scale farms dominate. The people here are poor and live simple lives, close to the earth.