According to the reports we had read there is nothing remarkable about Long Xuyen. This was also almost true of our experience of it except for one thing - the early morning motorcycle traffic. Vietnam is the land of millions of motorcyclists. We knew this already from our visit last year. On the ride up to Chau Doc from Ha Tien I started counting vehicles on the quiet country roads we were riding and had got to 36 motorcyclists before I got another vehicle (a bus), followed by 17 more before I got a cart being drawn to 2 water buffalo. However, this morning's six o'clock traffic in Long Xuyen was just thousands upon thousands of motorcycles. The experience of riding is this wave was too awesome to be scary. After about eight kilometers we stopped to pick up a banh mi (with pork this time) and to catch our breath after all the excitement.

Then it was onto the one of the longest almost straight roads I have ridden in my life. If Google Maps is to be trusted it was mostly straight for about 55 kilometers but I know that there were a few kinks along the way. The weather forecast had suggested we would have a tailwind heading down to the coast but we found ourselves cycling into an on-shore wind the whole way. It was also wall-to-wall buildings along the side of the way without even a small rice paddy in sight but there was so many interesting everyday things to see that we weren't bored. Pigs on motorcycles (quite a few of them), soup deliveries by motorcycle (a wire frame stacked with bowls full of tasty stuff) and frogs on strings to mention a few. Amazingly, we never took a single photograph.

On reaching Rach Gia (apparently pronounced Ratya) we found a com tam stall for lunch and then when looking for accommodation. Our first choice was fully booked but the Palace Hotel, a hundred meters away, had triple rooms available. At double the price we would really like to pay and with an enormous room, we should have gone looking elsewhere but what the heck. The reason for the hotels being full is apparently because the ferries to Phu Quoc are not running because of rough weather.

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