7/2 Mekong Delta Scooter Tour

Based on recommendations from Chris and Mimi, I decided to book a tour with Vietnam Vespas. The tour was to involve driving motorbikes through the Vietnamese Mekong Delta. I was picked up in the morning from Chris and Mimi's apartment and driven out into the suburbs where it was safer for me to drive a motorbike. There I met Steve, the owner, and he watched me test drive a motorbike and so I could prove my proficiency. I met the only other customer for the day who was from Cambodia and her name was Akim. She was doing the tour because she was considering starting a similar company in Siem Reap. We started the tour with Akim on the back of a motorbike with her driver and also our tour guide on the back of a motorbike with his driver and me driving my own motorbike. We passed through some villages and got further and further out into the country. We stopped to look at some fish and shrimp farms, which are basically big ponds with propellors on the surface to aerate the water for the shrimp. We reached a village  with some narrow streets and a market, and we stopped to eat some market food including some steamed clams with lemongrass and some sea shells filled with eggs and scallops and peanuts. We were trying to limit how much we ate so we could save room for lunch but our guide "Cao" then ordered some watermelon for us. 

We continued on into the countryside and stopped to see different things along the way, like rice paddies, a rice wine moonshine operation, an incense factory, and a temple that was shut down by the communists but was just now getting back up and running. At a lot of the stops, Akim and Cao would get into some deep discussion about the state of Cambodia or Vietnam and it was interesting to hear the different perspectives from a Vietnamese guy versus a Cambodian lady. Cao was very animated and is the type of guy that speaks with more confidence than he might actually have. He's rather jaded towards the Vietnamese government, and rightfully so since he was put in a reeducation camp after the government found 30-something shoeboxes of negatives in his house from photographs he'd taken during the war. After being released he wasn't allowed to touch a camera for 10 years. 

The tour continued through back roads past simple wood and grass huts, always with friendly kids waving and shouting "hello." We made a number of river crossings on ferries to get across the various Mekong tributaries. At one point we were on a singletrack trail and then had to cross a rickety narrow bridge with no side rails. Cao said we had to cross one at a time because the bridge was too weak, and I wimped out and had him drive the motorbike while I walked across it. My motorbike skills were not yet ready for that challenge.

We had a late lunch at a restaurant near where we started and had way more food provided to us than we could possibly eat. There was a large party of government employees drunkenly (loudly) singing karaoke nearby. After lunch we headed back to the headquarters and the tour was over. It was a lot of fun and a great way to see how people live in the Mekong delta region.

Photo album: https://picasaweb.google.com/108933817613007660268/20130702MekongDeltaScooterTour?authuser=0&feat=directlink