Day 3

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Ok this is a bit of a catch up. We get so little free time and sometimes it's hard to find time to be in touch with everyone.

Ok this was our last big cycle day in Vietnam. After breakfast (6am as usual!) we walked to the river side and caught a ferry to see the floating market. which is basically a market in the middle of the river, and farmers selling fruit and vegetables. A bit weird but interesting to see. Then we docked near a local food market which was really interesting because it was where the locals go to buy their food. Then it was time to pick the bikes up and start pedalling!

Again another hot day for cycling, but everyone takes it at their own pace. My pace is usually quite near the back or at the back, i don't see a lot of Matt on the ride as he's much further up the field.

We stopped for lunch in an area which has a lot of snakes. There were some on the roadside in containers for sale. When we got the restaurant for lunch, you could go and view a snake being killed and it's blood being dripped into a jug. Then if you really, really wanted to you could try snake for lunch and also a drink with the blood in (according to those that tried it, it was likes Bloody Mary! Matt was very brave and tried both the snake and drink. The snake was grim but the drink was ok. Needless to say I tried neither. After lunch, it was back on the bikes. Today we cycled through a slightly more industrial area. Not on our scale but a bit busier Than before. Later in the day it absolutely poured with rain and a couple of people came off their bikes. It was very slippy and quite dangerous. The final part of the ride was a long straight road and some of the young guns were racing against the crew for the last 15kms. The crew won! I had my only little race with a young vietnamese school boy who was cycling home and decided he wanted to go faster than us. It was really funny as I ended up racing him along a busy road. I think I'll probably have to call it a draw as he wouldn't give up trying. Every time I thought I'd got past him, he would reappear and start racing again. This part of the ride was very tough as it was a long, straight road with busy traffics, temperatures of probably about 35 degrees and not much to look at.

once finished (we rode about 80+ kms). We had a long transfer to the town of Chau Doc, which was our last hotel in Vietnam. The hotel was ok. Staff not the friendliest in the business and they shut the bar by about 11pm. The hotel was about 5kms from any restaurants or bars. Some of us sat in the foyer and had a couple of drinks and some of the younger crowd sat outside on the steps of the hotel!! Then off to bed as we had to be up again by 6am!!

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