A slightly more relaxed day today. Taking in yet more sights. Really, I think that’s one of the best things about going with the Easy Riders, you get to see heaps of the countryside, and have many small interesting stops along the way.
First was another coffee plantation, Vietnamese coffee plantation. Or so Loc told us. After we’d nibbled slightly through a ‘bean’ (though we were pretty sure he was joking by this stage) it was fairly obvious that it was a pepper tree..
The villagers are quite weathly (relative) here as they can fetch a good price for the pepper, with not a huge amount of effort.
We walked over the bridge with the two kids on it, but weren’t allowed on the other one! (fair enough). People drive motorbikes across the one with the kids. There are 2 foot long gaps in the floorboards!!
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We also passed through miles and miles of rubber tree plantations. The coloured strips are pieces of plastic used to deflect the water so that it doesn’t mix with the sap and ruin the quality of the rubber. All rubber and tree plantations are owned and run by the state. Most other things are privatised, but not those two.
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The final stop of the day was on the Ho Chi Minh trail. This was a road (ish) from Hanoi through parts of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos down to the South – which the NVA used to send supplies and reinforcements around.
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