Day 8
Country
We didn't go far today. Just rode to Tay Ninh some 40 km from the border. No breakfast or lunch for me as I had a an upset stomach from last night's dinner at Cafe Mimosa. I have eaten in many a dodgy place, have a pretty strong constitution and luckily am not normally affected but...
It only lasted one day. So all was good again. Ron on the other hand ate the leftovers from last night for breakfast and suffered for a couple of days. Enough said.
I had read about Tay Ninh and wanted to visit the Cao Dai Holy See. Caodaism is a religion officially established in the city of Tây Ninh in southern Vietnam in 1926. Their temple/church was as impressive in real life as it looks in the photos. It was a peceful and serene place and we spent a couple of hours looking around and then headed to the Black Virgin or Black Lady mountain which was nearby. It is marked as a nature reserve on the map and looked interesting. We could see the mountain in the distance as we rode out of Tay Ninh and it so reminded me of Chamundi Hill which is in Mysuru, my birth place in India.
When we got there it was about 2pm, very hot and sun was fierce. So we got changed to our shorts and flip flops right there in the bike parking lot as there was nowhere else. We left our luggage with the security guards (for a fee of course) and went up the hill in a cable car. A bit disappointed as it took us only half way up to a temple/pagoda. It was possible to walk the rest of the way to the summit and it would've taken a couple hours but we didn't have enough time to get up there and back before it got dark. So we went a bit of a way up where there was a shop with rows and rows of hammock for weary hikers to rest in. We had an ice cream and chilled for a bit chatting to Quong (pronounced Huan) who had taught himself English and was probably the best English speaking Vietnamese we met during our entire trip. He said he would talk to any tourist he could find just to practice his English.
We went back to Tay Ninh and stayed the night in a hotel. The room was occupied by a massive spider when we checked-in. The land lady made sure he checked-out. Had some rice and bread for dinner. Not very exciting but didn't want to risk anything else today.
