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THERE are these tiny plastic tables and stools here. They're low even for Vietnamese people, especially teenagers, who are taller than their parents. The stools are in primary colours and they and the equally low tables remind of nothing so much as being back in infants' school.

You expect to see them labelled "table" and "chair" and to see a "door".

We'd been sitting on a pile of heaped stools for a while this morning, drinking in the pale sunshine after a stint on Highway 1, when in walked three wild-haired lads and a slender girl with a bandage round one knee. Their hired black scooters had luggage wrapped in plastic and tied to a rack behind the seat.

"Hi", the first lad said casually. He was tall and hefty, with hair that couldn't decide if it was blond or ginger but was obviously enjoying its escape from a helmet. It gave him the air of a Viking.

"Where ya from?" he asked.

"France", we said, at last excused saying we lived in Paris.

"And you?"

"Straya."

I don't think I've ever heard a stronger Australian accent. I'm surprised I didn't recognise it quicker.

"You doing this thing?", he asked, pointing at the streaming traffic beyond the café's wire fence. The others were heading indoors to order, the girl stiff and grimacing. She didn't look happy. Gravity had taken its toll.

"'fraid we are," we told the Viking. "There are times you can't avoid it." He nodded his head in despair.

"Pretty shitty on a scooter, too", he said. He pronounced it priddy, shiddy and scooder. He shrugged and joined his pals.

The thing about Highway 1 is that it's a torrent of traffic and unpleasantly noisy with the hooting. But it does have a broad shoulder. On a bike, you have this generous alley to yourself, troubled only by the occasional two-wheeler coming the other way.

On a scooter, you'd be on the edge of one of the traffic lanes, neither wide enough to impress those coming from behind nor fast enough to run with the pack. It would indeed be shiddy.

Given that we had to ride Highway 1, it wasn't too bad. Just an exercise in knocking off distance and expecting little. We bowled along with a boisterous tail wind. The land all about has been deliberately flooded and the first bright green shoots of rice are raising their shoulders above the wind-rippled water.

Here, rice is com. It's the staple of every meal. The alarmingly named com chien - "chien" is French for a dog - turns out to be fried rice.

We see individuals, usually women, standing calf-deep in wellingtons which never get stuck in the mud. We see men urging buffalo or oxen to pull spike-wheeled trailers through the water.

And so the day finished harmlessly, without incident, neither enjoyable or disagreeable. Which, doubtless, is more than the scooter riders could say.