Day 2 Biking in the Mekong Delta

Our bike trip in Vietnam continued today as we made our way to the river town of Chau Doc. Tomorrow morning we will board a boat and make our way to Phnom Penh to rendezvous with our team and begin our dental mission. We are anxious to see the Cambodian children and determine if our work here last year helped them.  But for today, our biking and eating adventure continued.

The Mekong Delta is very flat and easy to ride. The houses are small by our standards and mostly raised on stilts due the inevitable flooding that occurs every rainy season. These homes have running water and electricity unlike the ones we saw last year across the river in Cambodia.

 

This man asked us to sit with him after we bought his fruit

Though this country is Communist, there does appear to be a "look the other way" attitude toward many things, including religion. Our guide tells us that the Vietnamese people are very non-political and that they only want to exist without the constant wars that have marred their history for thousands of years. In the last ten years they have moved forward economically and today there are very few homeless people and everyone is afforded a support system.

 

While we told the guide that we were adventurous eaters, 

the snake proved to be too much for us

 

The area in which we biked today provides most of the rice for the country and for export. Fruit trees of every variety dotted the landscape. We stopped at several roadside stands and sampled the various fruits. Due to the Lunar New Year, restaurants were closed. This proved to be no problem for our guide, who visited a local market and assembled the ingredients for a beef noodle soup. He borrowed the kitchen of a friend, and while Jamie and I lounged on hammocks, he produced a delicious lunch spiced with black pepper, garlic and lemon grass.

 

Enjoying the lunch that Hau made for us

Finished with our biking for today, we will rest until tonight, when we sample the local fish that Chau Doc is famous for. While we've enjoyed our free time, we're ready to begin the dental work that brought us here.