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Nothing can really prepare you for the streets of Saigon, Vietnam, where crossing the street is truly a risky venture. There really are no rules of the road here. Everything goes.

The below video clip was shot with a Canon G9, which was a great back-up camera by the way

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The Mighty Mekong. You may never have been there physically, but I bet you could conjure up an image pretty quickly if asked, maybe an exotic land where a thick jungle slips into a slow-moving mystical river, a place where tiny villages are hidden from everyone & everything. Well, toss in a lot of brown, a couple crushed up Coke bottles (ok, a lot) and hundreds of banging diesel engines. The Mekong is mighty, it’s very alive and in many places oddly beautiful; but in southern Vietnam, where the river fans out into a massive delta, reaching as far as Cambodia to the north and spilling into the South China Sea to the south, it’s a place where everything comes together, including lots of people.

Latte Anyone? Drinks on the Mekong River

After running away from Saigon as fast as we could (which was very slow given the horrendous traffic), we spent the next three days in the Mekong Delta region. Over the next couple days I hope to put together what images I can (video too but that’s coming later) of this fascinating region. Stay tuned…

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Located at an elevation of 4500 ft (1500 meters) Dalat, Vietnam, provides a much needed respite from the searing heat seen elsewhere in the country. It’s a land of rolling hills covered in towering pines, while hidden valleys reveal fields of artichokes and small rice-growing operations. It’s also one of the few spots in Vietnam (that we knew of) that offered the mountain bike geek an opportunity to enjoy some aerobic exercise, fresh air and a unique, locals perspective of the “vegetable capitol” of Vietnam.

Below are a couple mountain bike photos from our 3-hr tour with Phat Tire Ventures. We had two very friendly English-speaking guides accompany us, both of whom were quite impressed with our (or should I say Jeannine’s) ability to ride all the terrain.

Our guide, with water and food (lots of bananas) mountain Biking in Dalat, Vietnam

Phat Tire Ventures offers other mountain bike rides in and around Dalat, as well as in Hoi An, a town we visited later (photos coming soon) on the central coast of Vietnam.

Pine-covered hills felt almost like eastern Washington, not Vietnam

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After maybe a week traveling through the Mekong region and southern coast of Vietnam, I realized something about the food there. It’s all extremely fresh. I mean really fresh, as in it was killed that day (maybe the day prior) or pulled from the garden that morning. It’s kind of funny really, because here we are, in the great old innovative USA, thinking we’re all leading the charge in eating local & buying local. The reality is, we’ve got nothing on the Vietnamese (or anywhere in SE Asia really…or the rest of Asia…or maybe the rest of the world even…) Nearly every meal you order from a restaurant, big or small, is going to be ‘made to order’. (That being said, I can’t necessarily say the same thing about the thousands of movable food stalls dotting the streets and alleys…some were very good, while others, such as the vegetarian buffet in Prabang, Laos, were really really bad.)

There is a routine to getting the food as well. If you’re not growing it yourself, than most likely your marching down to the local market and buying it fresh, everyday. From the tiny villages of central Laos to the acres of stalls in Saigon and Hanoi, every where you visit, you’ll find a market. And these aren’t your Saturday Farmers markets.

This photo was shot at a locals market in Luang Prabang, Laos. (Yes, in certain places the tourist markets differ from where the locals shop.) Besides the mounds of colorful spices, rows of vegetables, tubs of fresh-caught fish, there is the meat section. It is here where your senses will be overloaded (if they haven’t been already) with the pungent smell of the living and the dead. There are the external parts – legs, feet, heads, skin, and the internal – organs, hearts…and liver…covered in blood. In some odd way I already miss it.

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