Slashed by hundreds of waterways Vietnam’s Mekong Delta looks like an ideal place to settle for vanquished and persecuted. It’s no wonder that many of the Cham after the Vietnamese gradually destroyed their various state formations between the 15th and 19th centuries sought refuge here. Since today the Cham constitute the country’s most significant Muslim minority, I decided to do a bike trip to the Delta as it would fulfill both my professional interest (studying Muslim communities) and allow me to pursue my hobby (bikepacking).
Upon arrival to Vietnam I set up my base in Bien Hoa city, just a few kilometers east of Saigon in one of my Hungarian friend’s house. I know Ede for a long time back my one year visiting studentship in Penang in 2012/13 when he was a lecturer at the local university. Since he moved to and married in Vietnam establishing himself as an English teacher and educational trainer. My girlfriend Angela was also with me for the weekend, so I spent the first three days off the bike with catching up with Ede and roaming around Saigon’s Muslim areas.
Finally, on a Tuesday dawn I set sail. I started before 4am to avoid the horrendous traffic in Ho Chi Minh City. In two hours I managed to get to the rural areas. My aim was to ride straight west towards the Cambodian border on rural backroads. The charm of the Delta immediately caught me. I was riding through lush green rice fields and sleepy villages. I stopped at a roadside hammock café to stretch my back and sip some coffee.
Since the previous few nights I barely had any sleep, I decided to stop for a nap after riding about 100km in a small riverside town (well, all towns are riverside in the Delta…) Tân Thạnh. I checked into a love hotel for hours. Yes, a love hotel. These establishments are everywhere in the country providing relief for those who can’t spend some private time together at home (and of course these places are the most convenient to practice humanity’s oldest industry). Most importantly they are super cheap – for 4 hours I paid 100 000 dong (less than 4 Euro) In my case I didn’t utilize the large mirror next to the bed and the complementary condom. Nevertheless I had 3 hours of refreshing sleep before hopping on the bike again.
A Vietnamese love hotel, serves also cyclists
After riding another 90 km and sipping some coconut in a hammock café I stopped for the night in Hồng Ngự, a surprisingly pleasant town. I grabbed some beef noodles with some Saigon beer then immediately went to sleep. The next morning after breakfast and the inevitable coffee I rode around 50km to the city of Châu Đốc in whose proximity most Muslims live. The road that leads to this area is simply lovely, dotted with gardens and beautiful wooden houses.
First I rode around the adjacent villages with significant Cham population and interviewed a number of people about their religious and social life. I speak neither Vietnamese nor Cham, but I am fluent in Malay. Malay is the language of religious instruction among several Muslim minorities in Mainland Southeast Asia, and many Muslims of the Mekong Delta either studied in Malaysia or learned the language in their local religious teaching institutions (madrasah or pondok).
I was curious about the structure and internal debates of the Muslim community in the Delta, therefore I asked them about the presence of puritan reformist schools of thought who oppose such practices as the veneration of saints and the visiting of their graves. This of course led me to visit the existing saint graves myself.
The locals instructed me to go first to Khánh Hòa village, seek out Ustaz Abdurrahman who will show me the grave. After my phone call the young ustaz (religious teacher) waited me with motorbike and led me to the tomb of Shaykh Ahmad, which lies in the backyard of a Vietnamese witch-doctor, hence difficult to find. According to the ustaz the story of the shaykh is already forgotten, but he was certain that the shaykh came to the area to teach Islam from the Middle East, and he was an Arab. The only information he could share is that a few generations ago the imam of the village dreamt about a column of light coming out of the jungle. When next day he went to the place he discovered a grave, and he immediately knew that a saint had been buried there (It is a fairly common story about the discovery of saints’ graves). Today ziyarah (grave visiting to ask for something like good fortune or healing from God at the presence of the saint) at this grave is even performed by Malaysian Muslims signifying how much Shaykh Ahmad is loved by God.
From Khánh Hòa I cycled to the Sam “Mountain”, a 230m high hill near Châu Đốc with dramatic views on the otherwise paper-flat Delta. After putting some effort into my pedals and climbing up to enjoy the panorama, I skipped the kitsch Pagodas that dot the hill and checked in a hotel in Châu Đốc. Châu Đốc is a surprisingly interesting and beautiful city with a number of Buddhist temples and churches.
I stated the next morning with some street fish soup and then sat for a while in a local cheap café before heading north towards the Cambodian border to visit the tomb of Shaykh Omar in Koh Khoi (Nhơn Hội in Vietnamese) village. In the village I met an Indonesia educated ustaz who showed me the tomb in the graveyard behind the local mosque. He explained that Shaykh Omar lived in the 17th century and came from the Arabian Peninsula to spread Islam among the Cham. Similar to Shaykh Ahmad, his grave is also regularly visited by Malaysians wishing to connect to God through the saint.
After leaving Koh Khoi I headed to another village, Vĩnh Trường about 22-23km to the south. The grave of Shaykh Kosem, another saint whom I was looking for lies behind the newly renovated Masjid La Ma. Interestingly, the refurbishment of the mosque and the small graveyard behind it was financed by a Turkish charity associated with Erdogan’s AKP party. I met an ustaz here who was teaching some Cham books for about 20 young boys and girls in the school attached to the mosque, but unfortunately his Malay wasn’t fluent enough to explain much about Shaykh Kosem.
When I left the grave of Shaykh Kosem the day turned into late afternoon, therefore I decided to head towards the final destination, a small Khmer majority town, Tri-Ton. The Mekong Delta is home to millions of Khmers (1,3-7 million; the former is the data of the Vietnamese government, the latter is the estimation of the renowned anthropologist Philip Taylor).
Just before nightfall I still could see the mountains that strangely emerge from the flat terrain of the Delta, but when it got dark I only could feel them when I faced some moderately steep climbs.
In Tri Ton I booked a room in a regular Vietnamese Nha Nghi, that refers to cheap hotels targeting mostly travelers. That night I had the best dinner of the entire road. I got excellent roasted beef prepared by the restaurant’s owner, a Khmer lady.
After having a few hours of good deep sleep, I dropped by a nearby café to dispel my morning headache caused by the lack of caffeine in my blood. After that I headed to the town center of Tri Ton. The town itself is very pleasant with a vibrant central market where I had a very nice fish soup for breakfast, and a beautiful, large Khmer temple.
From Tri Ton I headed to climb the Ap Ba mountain that has a large Buddhist temple and fascinating views from the top. After descending from the peak, I spent the rest of the day on paved but pothole filled and bumpy country roads and superb quality highways with wide motorbike lanes.
I reached Vinh Long just after sunset, a rather unimpressive and boring riverside town. Nevertheless, I had a relaxing sleep in a cheap but clean and quiet hotel. In the morning I headed towards Saigon then Bien Hoa. The roads were similar as the last day: bumpy country roads and smooth highways. The only challenging part was cycling through Saigon in late afternoon and fighting my battles with the millions of motorbikes. Nevertheless, some beautiful bridge-top views above the Saigon river compensated the effort. I reached Bien Hoa about 6.30pm. After having dinner with Ede and his wife, I packed my bike as I had to fly back to Singapore next day.
Bikepacking in the Mekong Delta will enter into those memories that I will cherish for the rest of my life. It is a beautiful and extremely interesting region with perhaps one of the kindest people in the planet. The ability to move quickly and effectively with the bike between mosques, Muslim villages and saints’ tombs helped to connect my hobby to my work once again very effectively.
Bike
This was the maiden journey of my custom made endurance road bike. It has a titanium frame created based on my bikefit data, body type and personal requirements. It has a less aggressive geometry to be able to ride hundreds of kilometers at once, if necessary. It also has a generous tyre clearance that accommodates road tyres up to 700x32c. I put on the bike aero bars and Redshift dual position seatpost to be able to change my riding position to relax my body on long rides. This is perhaps the best feature on the bike that helped me to relieve my muscles without the necessity to stop. I chose to ride this bike instead of my touring bike in Vietnam to be able to cover longer distances faster in the limited time I had in my hands, so I could spend more time with research and exploring. (I get a lot from fellow touring cyclists that bikepacking and touring is not about speed. But I think if you can spare 1-2 hours/day by purely being much faster is absolutely worth it as you can make more stops before you have to call it a day. Plus going fast over long distances can be also fun.)
I equipped the bike with 50/34t crankset and an 11-40t mountain bike cassette that interestingly fit with my Shimano Ultegra long derailleur cage without the need to use a Wolftooth roadlink. This setup slows me down a little bit on the flat as it is hard sometimes to find the right gears, but it helps tremendously during steep climbs, and this latter is often more important.
My only complaint is about the Schwalbe G-one Speed 700x30c tubeless tyres. In the third day in Chau Doc I got a big cut on the front tyre and all the sealant escaped. I had to replace it with an inner tube. The rear tyre got several punctures that the sealant fortunately closed. While it lasted till the end of the journey, I had to replace it in Singapore as a cut widened so it could not hold the sealant anymore.
Leave a Reply