"Can Tho colonial cossetting" and "In search of the Super Dong"!!...Post 11

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The ride from Vinh Long to Can Tho was virtually over before it began...Just 37 kms on sealed roads. The only slight problem being that the bridge linking the two river island provinces collapsed a short while ago (killing 67 people we were laughingly informed by Ho Chi Minh Diamond, see last blog)..Consequently we had to take a ferry across the river just east of Can Tho...Typical vietnamese chaotic efficiency, which I know sounds like a contradiction in terms,...method is to ride directly up to a narrow access ticket booth, bottle necking with hundreds of other bikes, buy the ticket and again bottle neck further into a holding bay about the size of a tennis court, capacity 250 or so bikes, which has rolling steel frame gates..Every 15 minutes these gates roll back revealing an opening of about 8 feet for the bikes to crush through before hurtling down a steep ramp to the waiting ferry which loads and leaves in 5 minutes flat...At the first attempt when we were in the holding bay, as the gates opened and all the bikes suddenly revved up and screamed towards the narrow opening I managed to stall the bike and couldnt get off to kick start it without losing a limb, so, by the time all the fumes had cleared and she was running again we tore up to the gates just as they were slid shut by a grinning twat in a uniform..These guys are the same the world over!
At least for the next time we were in pole position......I made sure as we finally gunned it down onto the ferry that I was revving as hard as I could to cover the uniformed pillock in as much oily smoke as I could...A little victory but much enjoyed!
The crossing was very short but we still had to cope with virtually all of the other passengers wanting to have a photo taken with us....This has happened everywhere we've stopped, even for a minute, in Vietnam and usually has been really good fun. It was fine this time until we were pulling up to the opposite dock and needed to get the bike running and us geared up and ready for the off...Unfortunately one very forceful old bird still hadnt got quite all the shots she wanted so was virtually pulling Rhianydd back off the bike to stand with her son while she snapped away...Oh the price of fame!

On arriving in Can Tho we headed straight for the Victoria hotel, which we had telephoned the previous evening, and checked into the very beautiful room awaiting us..
Dont take my word about this lovely hotel, check it out on the net...We had 2 nights of sheer unalduterated luxury!! Enough said.
On the evening of our second day we decided to drag ourselves away from the hotel and head into Can Tho town..In some ways this was a mistake...Even though it is very much the centre of Mekong tourism the fact that every second person in Can Tho was a fat, geriatric, badly dressed westerner (no, I dont mean me!) still came as a bit of a shock, and, after using "the roads less travelled" on our journey this far, being thrust into the middle of tourist city was not the best of culture shocks...Even the local life seemed adversely affected...The market in Can Tho, unlike all of the many others we had seen, was incredibly dirty and unpleasant and the streets onto which it spilled were not full of the same smiling faces..babies were crawling next to open drains and an overall sense of corruption was evident....When tourism is managed well it can obviously be a very positive force but here in Can Tho mistakes are already being made...
With a sense of relief we returned to the Victorias peaceful confines for the rest of our stay...

The next days ride was a landmark one..We had about 130 kms to reach Rach Gia which was to mark the end of our ride North to South in Mainland Vietnam...Both of us were excited about this but also feeling a little sad that this part of our adventure was approaching its end...No doubt why we had lingered for so long at the Victoria..
We left at 9.30 and headed west....One of the truisms of biking is that the latter part of journeys are often the most dangerous, you tend to be a little gung ho and over confident. I honestly dont think we were suffering from this but this final ride saw two near disasters...We had ridden for 60 kms and had taken a major turn towards the coast and found ourselves riding a road that was quite literally straight as it followed the side of a canal, and flanked by heavy urbanisation for the whole 70 kms to Rach Soi, a satellite town of the port of Rach Gia. The road was an utter race track!!... but, it was used by the local residents of the towns butting up to each other along its length as merely an extension of the shopfronts and pavement.. When a guy crawling along on the pavement on his Honda 50 just pulled out at a right angle directly in front of us (while looking up at the sky..I kid you not!) there was nothing we could do..I stood on the rear brake as well as hitting the front as hard as I could but after one of those "long moments", where you have eye contact and see a realization of impending doom, we still hit his front wheel at about 15 kph... we both stayed upright and after just a second he started smiling and, while I attempted to restart the bike he simply pootled off again..Looking forward no doubt to telling his story of a near death experience with crazy westerners on a "BIG BIKE!".
A similar thing happened after only 10 kms but luckily this time a swerve kept us upright and collision free and we stayed that way until we arrived at the Rach Gia office of the "Super Dong" high speed hydrofoil that was going to take us to Phu Quoc island for the next part of our trip..
The last ferry of the day had left shortly before we arrived so we booked tickets for the first one next day and then happened upon a chap who took us up to a small dockside hotel directly alongside where our ferry would leave from...Called the Lang Du it cost pennies but was absolutely fantastic..right on the rivermouth, clean as a whistle and with great food...I honestly enjoyed it as much as the colonial splendour of the Victoria...Rach Gia was a fantastic little town, really bustling and with its setting between the sea and 2 river mouths it had a really nautical air...We ate that evening on the banks of the southernmost river looking out to the Gulf of Thailand, sad that our wonderful mainland journey was complete but excited about the trip to Phu Quoc and what we would find when we got there.

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Photos

Rach Gia docks...
We arrived in time just to miss the Super Dong!

Comments

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update
Keep the blogs coming, glad to know they all recognise you both over there, has everyone asked for your signatures too?