Day Three: Chau Doc - mountains day

We set off for our day trip at 7am. The motorbike uncle, Mr Dong, came by and grabbed another motorbike driver off the street to take both M and me on our day trip.
vietnam travel
I don't really like to sit on motorbikes back in Singapore. However, this is the most common and easiest and cheapest way of transport here. SO, i begin my day on the bike...

Mr Dong took us to Tuc Dup Hill first. It's actually the furthest from the town centre, about 41km south. I think we took about 1h to get there. Along the way, we stopped to take pictures of rice fields etc. Chau Doc is very near to the cambodian border, thus on the way to Tuc Dup, cambodians occupied this area. There's many cambodian temples and many cambodians own the lands here.

I noticed that Mr Dong is very persistent to ask us to go to another place. Of course, he wants to earn extra. Thus, for every place he stopped (not on my day trip list), i'm kind of worried he'll charge me again later. We have already paid usd $15/ pax for this day trip yesterday at the agent office.

Anyway, Tuc Dup Hill was fun! I liked climbing in and out and weaving between those rocks. hahaha. A bit breathless though. The entrance fee is $8000 dong per pax.

Tuc Dup Hill is also termed at the '$2million dollar' hill as the US army tried to knock out the VC out from this hill during the war. It's a maze of caves, passageways in between the rocks of this hill.

The next stop is Cam Mountain. Paid $7000 dong per pax for the entrance fees. Frankly I know nuts about it. Then the ugly things came.... our dear Mr Dong says our day trip only brings us to Cam Mountain BUT not to the top. We need to take the motorbikes inside Cam Mountain area to go up and thats another $70,000 dong per pax. come on, I sort of expected this but its too expensive. Also, because i had already paid usd $15 per pax upfront, im really quite pissed off to pay another $70,000 dong. We tried to reason with him (esp when his english is limited). In the end, we choose to relax and had a drink at the foot of Cam Mountain and idle our time away till 2.30pm, after which we proceed to Sam Mountain. I wonder if the same thing will happened later.

Well, dear Mr Dong decide to play a good samaritarian. He says he's a good man and he'll bring us up without any extra charge. hahaha. luckily he brought us up. It's a tedious way up to Sam Mountain. The view is good and we had our dinner and coffee while waiting for sunset.

By the way, I got super sun-burnt today.