What's up in Chua Doc?

No sign of batman at the Bat Pagoda. Just a few bats.

My guidebook described the Bat Pagoda of Chua Doc as one of the most unusual sights in Vietnam's Mekong Delta. That was quite a big call. Already that morning I'd spotted a calendar on the wall of my hotel room featuring a picture of the manager, stripped to his waist standing next to a missile launcher in a green field. (I hoped that it was PhotoShopped but I really wasn't sure.)

The ride out to Chua Doc on a borrowed motor scooter wasn't short of unusual sights either. The roads were reduced to goat tracks by the farmers drying rice on the tarmac. And I shared it with gaggles of duck being herded by men wearing conical hats and brandishing big sticks.

I wanted to visit the Bat Pagoda because I'd loved the TV show Batman when I was a kid. There weren't any signs pointing to the Bat Pagoda – well, none featuring the internationally recognised bat symbol – and I soon found myself riding past rice paddies and prawn factories without a single clue as to where I was. I needed to ask directions but the only Vietnamese I spoke was English with the kind of accent I'd heard in 'Nam movies. My phrase book wasn't much help either. No matter how hard I looked I couldn't find the phrase 'Where the hell is the Bat Pagoda?'

I spotted a small restaurant ahead and turned in. A group of workers from the nearby prawn factory was having lunch. (A liquid lunch judging by the empty beer bottles.) I was about to launch into an elaborate set of charades that would see me attempt to imitate a bat when one of the guys at the table asked me where I was from. In English. And with a broad Australian accent.

His name was Phuc and he was from Cabramatta, in Sydney. He'd moved back to Vietnam a few years before to manage the prawn factory. When I said I was an Aussie too he invited me to share a drink.

Before you drink in Vietnam it is customary to wipe yourself down with a refresher towel. They come pre-wrapped in white plastic bags that I'd been struggling to open since arrived in the country. Phuc showed me the trick to opening it: you squeezed it until the air was down one end and then banged it on the table with a loud pop.

I finally left the restaurant as the sun was setting. Phuc scribbled a map on a napkin showing the way back to the Bat Pagoda and I wobbled off into the sunset. Ten minutes later I was there. It was so much easier getting help from someone with local knowledge and who could speak my language.

If only he had warned me that the Bat Pagoda was rubbish – just a pagoda with some bats in a tree nearby.

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