Cruising the Mekong
After traveling with our Backroads group from Luang Prabang, Laos, to Angkor Wat and Phnom Penh, Cambodia, we all boarded the Jehan in Phnom Penh for a Mekong River cruise, crossing the border from Cambodia into Vietnam that afternoon.
The Jehan is a beautiful British Colonial style Heritage Line ship. Our spacious stateroom was lavishly decorated and included a private balcony.
We took a ship’s tender ashore near the village of Tan Chau and met up with our bikes and our local team. The flood plains of the Mekong Delta are known as the country’s “rice bowl.” The rice harvest (one of three per year in this region) had just ended prior to our visit, but we saw people working in the paddies with hand tools.
From the small town of Sa Dec, one afternoon’s bike ride took us past old colonial cathedrals and Buddhist and Cao Dai temples.
Sa Dec’s market displayed the diverse and unique cuisine of Vietnam, including live eels, frogs, chicks, and crabs.
Negotiating local traffic on a bike was a unique experience in Vietnam, even after more than 10 Backroads trips. Roads were narrow and might suddenly become open-air markets, or gravel, or bridges made from wooden planks. Traffic ebbed and flowed, rarely coming to a complete stop, and our group of cyclists learned to move as a unit, using hand signals and calling out warnings about potholes, slowing traffic, and oncoming vehicles.
Road conditions varied from day to day. A bridge that had been passable the previous day was under construction the next. One day we ended up walking/dragging our bikes through a long stretch of sand due to new road repairs.
Our rides took us over many canals, which we crossed on simple wooden bridges and motorized ferries. We also saw monkey bridges, although these are not bike-friendly and we didn’t get a chance to cross one.
The three-night cruise was a good mix of active exploration and relaxing time aboard ship, with plenty of good food. There’s a reason folks call it “Snackroads.”
Bill has been getting more experience with portrait mode on his iPhone, and took nice pictures of our Backroads leaders (Jenna and Cassie) and of Lisa.
