Day 46 - The second day with the Easy Riders29 Oct 2006
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Rob had to remove this fella from our room at 4am
Walking over the waterfall on a pretty unstable bridge early in the...
One of the waterfalls
| The program for the day was to be similar but with the stops slightly more spread out as we had a greater distance to cover. Amongst the masses of information we were plied with, we also learned Quan & Huong's views on communism. During their time at the re-education camps and after their release, for many years neither had sufficient food to eat. Many nights they went to bed with great hunger pains, despite both of them getting their full ration of food allotted by the government. Often the people were short of rice, which is curious as Vietnam is currently the World's second largest producer of rice (second only to Thailand). During communist rule regardless of whether the people worked hard in the fields or not, their ration was always the same. The result was that most people were lazy. Of course the laziness compounded the situation. Only after 1998 when the country began to become more open and the internet arrived in Vietnam did the government allow people to work for themselves. Seemingly the Vietnamese have grasped the opportunity and are running with it whole-heartedly. "Right now, Vietnam is heaven". Their view was that communism was good in theory but doesn't work. As with our route the previous day, we were seeing parts of Vietnam that were strictly off limits for tourists until relatively recently. Our route took us alongside the Vietnam-Cambodia border, at points we were within 1km. Although the clouds often darkened worryingly, the rain never came. The end of the day found us in Bao Loc at the town's best pho restaurant (noodle soup) at Sam's request. We ate all our meals with Quan & Huong and finally, once off the beaten track, got to taste some delicious and cheap Vietnamese fare - a welcome side benefit of this excursion. |
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