Saturday morning started out with a bike ride. Nothing too strenuous!!!! We thought....
A casual ride down along the river. Then a right turn into a lane that lead to a local ferry. 3000 vnd each and we were on the other side of the river. That's 15cents remember. Yay...now we're on a fishing Island.
So cool. For us tourists, which we still are, as we cruise past on our bikes at leisure, the locals, mostly women, are working in the blistering sun, drying fish, fields of them. These ladies are covered head to toe so as not to get kissed by the sun, while stupid me, in my singlet and shorts am being not only 'kissed' but smothered, by the sun.
At this stage we've been out about 40 minutes. We made our way through a small village, stopping in at someone's home, known to our friend Monika. We are shown through the humble home with lovely hospitality. Including a glass of cool water before we leave. They speak NO English, we definately speak NO Viet.
From here on we are making it up as we go along....so the saying goes!!
There are four of us. Andrew and I.
Monika, a French lady, who spends a lot of time in Asia, doing tours and organising cooking classes etc. and Susie, who is from Oz, and is our new housemate, taking residence in a room adjacent to ours. Susie comes to Vietnam from time to time to teach children English.
We are a crazy bunch...and all in pursuit of 'adventure'....
Well we certainly got our monies worth today.
Somehow we got a little lost. And our casual bike ride turned into a 5 hour marathon. We got off the main road thinking if we followed the water we'd find another ferry to take us back across the river....Yeah.....NO!!!
The only breeze which was slight anyway, felt like a radiator on our skin. I had visions of Tom Hanks in "Castaway"...
We'd be found in about a months time...sun beaten and feral and crazy....
At one point we threw our bikes down and Susie and I opted for hopping in the river. We figured whatever was in the water, wasn't as bad as dying of heat exhaustion. Susie, our most senior participant was such a trouper.(68) She didn't complain, she just kept on going, despite falling off her bike in the sand. Man that stuff's hard to ride in.
After hours of 'making it up, and guessing, we finally found a paved road again. Then we found a tiny corner shop. I use the term very loosely. There were about 8 teenagers,who, all except the girl, were stoned or drunk. Lounging in hammocks and playing pool on a table that had no pockets....I think we were the highlight of their day. This crazy lost bunch of westerners. Almost delusional from sunstroke.We bought lukewarm soft drinks and tried to ask for directions...no luck, just a lot of giggles and pointing....at us!! Crazy nutters out in the midday sun. Poor Susie looked like a beet root.
Eventually Monika decided to call Phoung her landlord and ask him to send a taxi out, at least to take Susie back..the rest of us weren't too bad. Well..typical miscommunication, a guy on a motorbike comes out and leads us home. Susie did try the local trick of holding hands with the small boy who came with his dad on the bike, thus getting a bit of a hand up over a steep bridges we had still to ride over.
To be honest, we were miles and miles and miles from home, and would never have found our way back without him.
We crossed four more bridges. And then took another ferry back to Hoi An. Arriving back in town around 1:30pm...completely cooked and buggered!!!
Straight off the ferry into a cafe for 15c fresh cold beers.
Then once rehydrated, around the corner for the best veggie burgers in town.
After refuelling and resting, we all headed back to our rooms and lay down for a couple of hours.
Later that arvo..we met up again and headed out to the beach for a swim, food, music and relaxing.....
WHAT-a DAY :)
(Monika, Susie, Ish and Andrew)
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