So our last day of cycling in Vietnam ends today and we are tasked with doing 80Km by lunchtime. We start of by cycling alongside the river which nobody seems to get bored with as what is very apparent is that the waterways are the mainstay of transportation for what is very much a cottage industry in this country from flowers, to fruit, to rice, vegetables and today the section of the river we went down was where they were making bricks. Incredibly fascinating seeing kiln after kiln after kiln with thick black smoke billowing out of them. Once made they are then loaded onto boats and at one point there was a little old lady with a huge basket full of bricks loading them onto about which would have tested many a tattooed hod carrier. It seems that it does not matter where you are in the world, a woman is always the grafter.
We then take a hydration breaks at the 25Km, 40Km and 60Km marks to then do the final 20Km on the open road which was quite gruelling for a couple of us as the heat from the road was like having a fan heater blown in your face continuously all the time and I don't mind admitting I was one of those people.
All of a sudden there is a different dynamic to the last 20Km, the A's and the B's have become the AB's and the C's have become the C's still to be quite frank and being one of the C's and from what was reported there was a race to the finish line and the yellow jersey went to Neil Gibbard, followed closely by Randall McAllister and Dominic Clarke, so a very well done to them, who says there is not an I in team.
We then had a well deserved lunch, our bicycles were stripped of our own parts and they were then packed away on the lorry and we waved them off back to Ho Chi Minh City, they had been faithful,loyal and true during our cycling in Vietnam.
It was then back on the coach for a 5 minute drive to the Vietnamese Killing Fields Museum where back in the late 70's the Cambodians came over the border and killed over 4000 men, women and children, not with bullets but with bamboo canes and I think I will leave it at that because the photographs in the museum were very graphic to say the least.
So our last night in Vietnam and off to Cambodia in the morning and a day of rest.