vietnam

annie and i are in vietnam for a relaxing holiday before i move my life to africa in three weeks. what better way is there to relax than to jump on some bicycles and ride through the mekong delta. a tour was booked. this was going to be FUN.

day one. we met our tour guide trieu and headed off in a bus to pick up the four other ‘casual cyclists’ we’d be touring with. first we picked up an american couple (let’s call them GI jane and GI joe) on their honeymoon. we rolled on to our next pick-up point only to have to wait almost half an hour for our remaining tour buddies. GI’s jane and joe speculated with us over where our missing members were from. there was a consensus that they were probably european. i voted for french... certain they were late because they were too busy eating bread, smoking, and being better looking than the rest of us.

they were all smiles as they eventually boarded the bus. one i forgave immediately... prematurely greying, definitely the best looking member of our tribe, i’m going to call him george clooney. the second i forgave only because he was friends with mr clooney. i’m going to call him puffa because he chain smoked for the entire tour. they were a pair of hungarian mates... our group was complete.

we drove for some hours then transferred to a boat, then a smaller boat for seemingly no reason. hours passed then someone force fed me more fruit than i’ve eaten in a decade. this was the best cycling tour i’d ever been on! GI joe told us about a time he ate a guinea pig and about how he wanted to eat snakes and rats. GI jane looked on lovingly. puffa smoked a pack or two. mr clooney told a witty anecdote about a game of hangman he once played, and in trying to translate ‘hangman’ accidentally called it ‘the execution game’. we eventually got on our bikes to roll for a few hours in the afternoon. annie didn’t fall off, which was good for the esteem as we quickly discovered we were riding with four elite athletes.

preparing to eat my own body weight in fruit by riding in a tiny tiny boat

cruising in a bigger boat... wearing my helmet cause, you know, i'm on a bike tour

our day ended in rustic bungalows atop the mekong river. puffa puffed and drank. the GIs swapped travel stories with annie and i. mr clooney persisted in wearing a shirt in public at all times.

the mekong

day two. if day one was anything to go by we’d probably spend the majority of our day eating pineapple then get on our bikes for fifteen or twenty minutes in the afternoon. this was not to be. we found out there would be several hours of cycling... how dare they make us do that on a cycling tour. it was stinking hot and we were all struggling. puffa was only able to smoke a handful of ciggies on the bike, and had been forced to replace his vodka with water. about an hour in, i looked over at annie and she started crying. i’d like to believe it wasn’t purely the sight of my face that caused the meltdown, but i can’t be sure.  the GIs battled on in true american style. mr clooney single handedly brought fluro orange lycra back in fashion.

cycling by rice paddies...smiling cause trieu just told us we were fifteen minutes from lunch

trieu cut the cycling hours back a bit due to the extreme weather – or as he called it – “a perfectly normal summer day.” annie and GI jane had a break from the cycling after lunch. i desperately wanted to not cycle, but mr clooney was cycling, so...

a well earned dinner at the end of day two was a trip highlight for me. it started with puffa and george clooney approaching annie and i saying, “before we go to dinner we have a surprise for you in our room.” i vaguely recalled someone once warning me about men who used this line, but mr clooney...

it turned out the whole group was invited, so we were safe with the crazy hungarians. we gathered in their room and they poured an unknown liquid into glasses for us to drink together. again... something about accepting drinks from strangers... blah blah. it smelled like rocket fuel that had been diluted with nail polish remover. GI joe was sure he’d smelled something similar before. i pondered whether it had been his beverage of choice to wash the taste of squirrel out of his mouth after an afternoon snack at some point. i chugged it down as quickly as i could. not surprisingly, it tasted like rocket fuel that had been diluted with nail polish remover. thank you hungary.

more mystery drinks were served at dinner when trieu poured another unknown liquid into our glasses at the restaurant. i shot something down that had hints of rotting rice at its core. trieu proceeded to pull out his phone and show us photos of the brewing process for the beverage we’d just ingested. there was a glass receptacle of some sort with green things floating in it which we were informed was ginseng. in the corner of the picture was what appeared to be a floating baby tiger. trieu went on to tell us that a baby tiger was, in fact, one of the key ingredients... along with six additional tiger penises and the penises of five himalayan goats. at this point, puffa chose to speak english for the first time on the tour to utter the phrase we were all thinking but were too afraid to ask... “is he f#@king kidding us?” the answer is still unknown. either way, i find it hard to believe that a baby tiger would taste like rotting rice.

day three. trieu finally realised none of us were particularly interested in cycling on our cycling tour, so he cut back the bike hours some more. this gave us time for some more boat cruising on the mekong (more in line with what we were all expecting of a cycling tour) and i was finally able to realise my lifelong dream of eating an entire pineapple in one sitting. mr clooney touched my arm even though i was wearing oversized men’s running shorts and the same singlet i’d had on for three days. i think he might be god.

more boating on our cycling tour... GI jane in the background

me with the first quarter of my pineapple
(wearing my lifejacket because it's important to be safe while eating a whole pineapple on a river)

we eventually got on our bikes for our last bit of cycling. puffa prepared with half a pack and a shot of nail polish remover. george clooney looked on like some kind of perfect greek statue. the GIs remained upbeat and positive and i wondered if they’d secretly had a few shots of polish remover themselves. annie and i assessed our chafing and decided we had more left to give. we ended up by cycling in to can tho (one of the five biggest cities in vietnam) where i was passing mopeds and cycling into oncoming traffic like a vietnamese maniac... it was perfect.

george clooney on the left and puffa doing what he does best on the right

we did cycle probably a bit more than this post would have you believe, but again i experienced that it’s not really what we’re doing in life that we remember, so much as the people we are doing it with. i met some wonderful people this week who i may never see again, but who gave me the gift of themselves for a few short days. trieu, mrs and mr GI, puffa and george clooney... thank you!!