Vietnam is Gorgeous

We ate a late lunch in Long Xuyên before touring a Cao Đài temple that Tiger knew something about (Tiger knew something about nearly everything). He summarized the beliefs and traditions of a sect that borrows bits and pieces of dogma from lots of religious and philosophical thinkers, including Confucius and Jesus and Victor Hugo. We walked into the place unannounced, but were warmly welcomed by a guy who appeared to be a Cao Đài elder.

Tiger (tigernguyen2407 at yahoo dot com) walked us through the architecture (heavy on both sculpture and neon) of the structure, as if he did it every day. Even the elder seemed impressed, deferring to Tiger’s explanations rather stepping in to correct him on the fine points of Cao Đài theology. No doubt it is a complicated subject even for experts.

We then continued driving in the direction of Cambodia until we were about midway through Châu Thành district. We turned left and switched back to bicycles on road number 941, a long, straight ribbon of two-lane highway with water on either side of us. Like lots of the roads in the Delta, this one went for miles without any way to turn off of it other than by boat. Once you’re moving in that direction, you’re likely to stay in that direction until you get where you’re going.

This setup is great for riding, especially if you don’t really know where you’re going, and especially late in the day, when the sun isn’t too high and the glare off the water on either side isn’t too bright. We cruised along, enjoying the light motorized traffic that characterized all of the country roads we traveled during this trip. There were lots of bridges to cross over as we passed perpendicular canals. The houses were close to the road, often on stilts above the water, and were full of waving kids. Behind them were endless flooded rice fields. It was hard to know where the paddy stopped and river began.

Eventually Road 941 becomes surrounded by land again on both sides as it enters Tri Tôn. The town is medium sized, a pleasant change from the straight line and the nonstop horizon. On the public propaganda loudspeakers announcements are made in both Vietnamese and Khmer.

The road forked and we curved to the left, eventually finding ourselves on Road 955B. Here the landscape consisted of mountains, broken forests, and, because it was the season when the rice had just been harvested, large congregations of ducks in knee-high pens. I gather that the ducks feast on the rice chaff and help fertilize the next crop in the process.

An hour or so earlier, with the five-o’clock sun sparkling off the Mekong-flooded fields, I had thought that the biking couldn’t get any more effortless nor the scenery any more agreeable. Now, taking in the smell of evening cooking fires and the sounds of neighbors shouting across pastures to one another, I wanted the road to go on forever.

The road ended, of course, and the sun set. We stopped briefly in the gloom to swing through a museum (Nhà mồ Ba Chúc) dedicated to atrocities carried out by Khmer Rouge in that part of the world during the late 1970s. Even that ghastly memory couldn’t spoil our delightful afternoon. Our van turned right onto Road 955A, another long straight ribbon surrounded by water that would have also made a great ride if it hadn’t been dark. On the left was the 100-kilometer-long Vĩnh Tế canal, paralleling the Cambodian border.

We drove on in to Châu Đốc, the first big town that the Mekong meets as it flows out of Cambodia and prepares to splinter before finally arriving at the sea.