Sam Mountain in Chau Doc, Vietnam
The other main tourist attraction of Chau Doc is Sam Mountain which is 6km from town so you'll need some transport. On our first night we were 'stalked' by one of the cyclo riders who seemed to pop up no matter which street we were on. He wanted $5 to take us to the mountain so we agreed to meet him the next afternoon and head there for sunset.
The cyclo rider picked us up at 3.30pm arriving with his wife and Downs syndrome daughter. The poor bloke works 24 hours a day to support his family as as his wife has to stay at home to look after their child. They could put her in a government school but then they'd never see her again. The cyclo man just puts his situation down to Lord Buddha and just gets on with it with a big smile on his face. A lesson to us all!
A couple of moped riders gave us a push on the way to the base of Sam Mountain then our man showed us around Tay An Pagoda, the Temple of Lady Xu and the Tomb of Thoai Ngoc Hau. The moped drivers then took us to the top of Sam Mountain (for a small fee) then waited for us so that we could watch the sunset over the endless padi fields with Cambodia in the distance.
It was a hard cycle back in the dark without the help of the mopeds, even more so when we got a puncture. When we paid the rider more than he'd asked for and paid for his puncture to be repaired ($7.50 in total) he seemed quite concerned and informed us that we'd given him more than we'd agreed and wanted to be sure that we were aware of it!
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