We were due to be picked up at 7.00am for our big day trip today. I set an alarm for 5.15am so that we could be in the dining room at 6.00am when it opened for breakfast. As is always the case when one has an early alarm set, I was awake at 4.45am! After laying in bed for a few minutes debating with myself the pros and cons of trying to get another half an hour of sleep I decided to bite the bullet and head into the shower.
We were in and out of the dining room by 6.30am which left time for us to clean our teeth and be back downstairs to meet our tour guide for the day at 7.00am. Nam was already there when we arrived in the foyer and took us out the front where we boarded our and met our driver for the day. Unfortunately, I didnt catch our drivers name, but it sounded a bit like ‘Wen.
Thank goodness we were heading out of the city because the inbound traffic was incredibly heavy with all the into town for their working day. It took us nearly an hour
to reach the outskirts of the city and enter the provinces. Even then it was hard to tell we were in the country as Route 22, the main route between Ho Chi Minh City and Cambodia, is lined with homes and businesses. All of the buildings are concentrated on the main road with the land away from the thoroughfare used for agriculture. As the buildings became a bit more we started to see fields of rice and lotus ponds interspersed with clumps of rubber trees.
Much of Route 22 has a solid median strip in the centre to try to stop vehicles travelling on the wrong side of the road and it mostly works! In the city the median strips were planted with bougainvillea. The gardeners were busily trimming the bougainvillea which Nam said is necessary because it is thorny and a bit of a hazard for motorbike riders! The gardeners ride their motorbike to the section of the section of median strips they are working on and just park their bike beside the barrier before climbing into the garden and doing their weeding and pruning. No cones or safety barriers in sight! As we drove further
out of town the planted median strips were replaced with bare concrete barriers. These dont have to be weeded or pruned, but they still have to be installed and maintained. The workers out in the provinces also work on the median strip in the center of the road without any safety equipment.
Another quirky thing that we saw were all of the hammock cafes. Because Route 22 is the main route between Vietnam and Cambodia it has a lot of people who are travelling long distances between to the two countries. They can stop at a hammock caf, buy a cup of coffee and take a nap in a hammock for as long as they want to.
About two hours into our journey we stopped for break in Trang Bang. This village formed the backdrop to Nick Uts Pulitzer photograph titled ‘The Terror of War. The photo features a Phan Thi Kim Phuc fleeing from a napalm bomb and it is a well known and emotive image of the Vietnam War. Our stop wasnt too confronting. There was no toilet seat, but at least we had a toilet to sit on.
Finally, after three hours on the road, we arrived at Ni B Den Ty Ninh which translates to Black Lady or Black Virgin Mountain. Volcanic in origin (but now extinct), the mountain is an almost perfect cinder cone that rises to 996 metres above the flat Mekong Delta jungle. The mountain is with caves where the Viet Cong hid during the war. It is also close to the end of the Ho Chi Minh Trail just a few kilometres west across the Cambodian border. This meant that it was heavily bombed during the war and its sides are covered in granite boulders that were created, not by natural erosion, but by the wartime bombings.
Since the war the mountain has been redeveloped with cable car rides and temples. The older cable car runs part way up the mountain and a second, newer, cable car goes all the way to the top of the mountain where several gigantic statues of Buddha take pride of place.
