Discover the Kingdom of pottery & brick kilns - Sadec

After your leisurely breakfast at homestay, take photos with your host before loading your luggage on the support vehicle. Then, we start cycling from the homestay to the market of Cho Lach. Ride passes nursery, bonsai plants. You can see the old colonial bridge over the canal from the market. The French built the canal to connect the Mekong River to the Saigon River for water transport. Then we continue cycling to Co Chien River to have a ferry to Mang Thit, Vinh Long. Here we are in the Red Kingdom of Vinh Long, Mekong Delta's Vietnam.

Pottery and brick-making in villages of Mang Thit and Long Ho districts of Vinh Long province, Mekong Delta's Vietnam, has been a pottery industry for over a hundred years, and it still exists and develops to these days. People still use the old techniques to make various pottery and bricks. In the past, locals made yin and yang tiles, but many mills abandoned them because yin and yang ties have been known for years. Most of the mills, kilns, and factories are by the Mekong River, its branches, and canals because water was the main transportation in the past and is still in use today.

More than thousands of households in Mang Thit and Long Ho are now working in the production of brick and pottery. Coming here to admire the techniques of making a wide variety of clay products, you are welcome and have an opportunity to see every corner of villages. Most of the products are handmade for Vietnam's and overseas markets. Ride a bicycle on the country road, visit some special and unique old kilns, and see how people make various beautiful pottery in clay.

This morning's ride is about 25km, with many stops at the oldest kilns and mills, including a ferry crossing Co Chien River. That is enough for this morning. We get on the support vehicles for a transfer to Vinh Long town. Enjoy lunch at a restaurant by Co Chien River. After lunch, our van/minibus will take us to Cai Tau for the afternoon ride. It is a pleasant ride, so we take it easy on paths, through small villages along the country road, river branches, and creeks. We get on a support vehicle in the outskirts of Sadec town. Check in to the hotel and dine in town in the evening.

For the locals as Vietnamese, Sadec is famous for flowers of, rose and bonsai plants, and it's always colorful and stunning in the Mekong Delta and more and more when the Lunar New Year is coming. Sadec got to know and attracted overseas tourists since 1984 when Duras's 1984 Prix Goncourt-winning novel was published. Marguerite Duras lived in Sa Đec during the three- to four years between 1928 and 1932. Her mother ran a school on the corner of Hung Vuong and Ho Xuan Huong, where a school still exists today. Duras met Huynh Thuy Le, the son of a wealthy Chinese family, and the two became involved in love. The house is located by the river and near the market. We will visit this house, and the local guide will tell you about the loved story of Marguerite Duras before we start our last day ride to villages of flowers and Xeo Quyt forest.

Enjoy riding on small paths along the Mekong River to the home of flowers, which is not far from Sadec. Spend time to wander through villages and experience how to grow flower plants. Then we took a ferry to the other side of the Upper River and will continue cycling to Xeo Quyt forest. It was an Army base of Viet Cong before 1975. You will have a sampan boat rowed into small rivers and pass some thatch houses and bunkers of the Viet Cong. Then, have lunch at the restaurant nearby before returning to Ho Chi Minh in the late afternoon.