The goal was to get out of town and have a good, long workout.  A good, long workout is an understatement.  We got thru town and the road narrowed to the equivalent of a wide sidewalk . . . Enough for two scooters to pass.  This is just what we are looking for, a series of small villages along the Mekong, and each school, or restaurant had chorus of HELLO, HELLO.  I don’t think they have many foreigners come through town.  we are in heaven and go farther and farther.  The path narrows to concrete tiles, more hellos, more kids going home for lunch, we keep going, passing quickly from cobbles to just dirt, and I have no idea how many kilometers we have gone but it has been a couple hours now. We are mountain biking now, on a rocky, washed out path . . . .   far ahead (of course) David stops, he is holding his pedal in his hand?   The threads inside the bike crank had stripped out with the stress of the pedal holding his weight, and the bumpy path.  We forgot that these were not dirt bikes.    No pedal = no way to get home, except walking.

We had seen some ferries, but had no idea were to find them, so we started walking.  David saw some rubber from a tire on the ground, he wrapped it around the pedal threads and shoved it into the crank and it would work for a little bit . . .  Every 1,000 yards it would fail and we would apply another piece of rubber and try and move on.   There are scooters passing us on the path, but with no language skills, we could not explain what we needed.  No one was blending, so they mostly looked at us with that “yep, you have a problem” look.

We tried to repair in the wide places in the path, this one place had a ramp leading to the water.   I walked down the ramp, hoping to hire a fisherman to bring us back to town via their long boat.  So I am on the pier waving, the fishermen are waving back.  HELLO. I thought this was so nice just a half hour ago.  But then I notice this boat is heading for me, they are coming, it’s the ferry. We ended up at the ferry stop at just the right minute.  What are the odds?  On the other side of the river there are roads!  So we clamber aboard like this was our plan all along, muttering about our luck. We continued our walk on the city side of the river looking for help repairing the crank arm and pedal.  One shop looked at it and took out the welder to attach the pedal to the crank arm.  Remember, the pedals have to be removed to get the bike in the suitcase, so no thank you and continued our search for a repair and a cold drink.

We walk till we find some main road, then down that road till we find a place that sells cold drinks. Our Vietnamese is as good as their English, so finally, I walk into the kitchen to look for the cold drinks, retrieving a couple of green teas.  Some one points to where we are on the tourist map, I was shocked how far we had gone–nearly off the map, literally.  The cafe owners were kind enough to call a taxi, and we were home in about 10 more minutes.

The break down is a showstopper for us.  How do you explain and get a custom bike repaired in a foreign country, ugh.  The work here is divided into guilds and like stores/services are concentrated in one street.  There is an electronic street (David’s favorite), plumbing street, flooring street, etc. We needed bicycle street. The hotel wrote on our map — shock, bicycle guild is two blocks away!  Away we go, at the first place, we mimed the pedal falling out of the crank.  They talked among themselves, dug through some boxes, and viola a crank, our pedals work in the threads, and they had a puller to accomplish a complete repair in less than 15 minutes.

So let’s recap:  Ferry 50 cents, drinks $2  (we were ripped off but what could we say), taxi $1.50, and bike repair $4.    breaking down in the Mekong delta . . .  Priceless.