So friends,
As most of you know, Eliane and I are having a prolonged adventure wandering around Viet Nam (Vietnam). Below is some description of what we are up to; it was written after we had been here about 9 or 10 days and while we were in the middle of the country in the town of Hoi-An, an old fishing port and now a beach town:
Elaine is out re-visiting some places down by the port and at 13:30 we get a bus to Hue, so I thought that I would start a second part about our trip. Still, we have no way to put up photos as Face Book remains blocked, so it must be a government thing about Face Book.
Hanoi - Da Nang - Hoi-An
Well, we finished in Hanoi about a week ago. We then decided, after checking with the locals, to fly the 800 km from Hanoi to Da Nang. Everyone confirmed that by road or train it would be an 8 to 10 hr ride; too much lost time as the road is not a beautiful coast road! So, when we arrive from Sapa (the mountain town we visited and got muddy in) at the Hanoi train station at 05:30 we took a taxi to the airport. This taxi ride gives us time to get checked in and go through security, then go have a noodle soup breakfast (I like my noodle soup for b/fast!) before the flight. So, we found a small airport snack bar selling soup and then next to it there was a larger shop / stand selling boxed sandwiches, chocolates and the other airport type stuff. Well, as we are looking in that shop display we see a big brown rat come out from amongst the chocolate boxes, look around and scurry up some of the shelves behind. He then sat there on the shelves, but seemed unafraid! Then he went back down to the display and a while later came out and went back up to the shelves. The two girls behind the counter seemed not to notice the rat...eventually we could not stand it anymore, we were so curious as to why no one cared, so Mama asked.....the rat was a pet rat! Just a pet rat roaming free and no one worried about him or cats or traps, etc. Imagine that in the airport in Toulouse or STL! Interesting.....the rat was a big brown one, just like we saw in the streets! Cute, I suppose, but different for an airport!
As most of you know, Eliane and I are having a prolonged adventure wandering around Viet Nam (Vietnam). Below is some description of what we are up to; it was written after we had been here about 9 or 10 days and while we were in the middle of the country in the town of Hoi-An, an old fishing port and now a beach town:
Elaine is out re-visiting some places down by the port and at 13:30 we get a bus to Hue, so I thought that I would start a second part about our trip. Still, we have no way to put up photos as Face Book remains blocked, so it must be a government thing about Face Book.
Hanoi - Da Nang - Hoi-An
Well, we finished in Hanoi about a week ago. We then decided, after checking with the locals, to fly the 800 km from Hanoi to Da Nang. Everyone confirmed that by road or train it would be an 8 to 10 hr ride; too much lost time as the road is not a beautiful coast road! So, when we arrive from Sapa (the mountain town we visited and got muddy in) at the Hanoi train station at 05:30 we took a taxi to the airport. This taxi ride gives us time to get checked in and go through security, then go have a noodle soup breakfast (I like my noodle soup for b/fast!) before the flight. So, we found a small airport snack bar selling soup and then next to it there was a larger shop / stand selling boxed sandwiches, chocolates and the other airport type stuff. Well, as we are looking in that shop display we see a big brown rat come out from amongst the chocolate boxes, look around and scurry up some of the shelves behind. He then sat there on the shelves, but seemed unafraid! Then he went back down to the display and a while later came out and went back up to the shelves. The two girls behind the counter seemed not to notice the rat...eventually we could not stand it anymore, we were so curious as to why no one cared, so Mama asked.....the rat was a pet rat! Just a pet rat roaming free and no one worried about him or cats or traps, etc. Imagine that in the airport in Toulouse or STL! Interesting.....the rat was a big brown one, just like we saw in the streets! Cute, I suppose, but different for an airport!
Well, our flight is finally called and we board a nice new Airbus 321 (some version of an A320) and settle in comfortably for the 1 hr. flight to Da Nang. As we get ready for landing at Da Nang the captain comes over the PA system, first in English and then in French; he is obviously a French national and must be a contract pilot. We land at Da Nang and taxi past old, disused hangars that look like fighter shelters put up by the US during the Vietnam war......it's like being in a MASH film!
Once we collected our luggage we decided to do things the simple way and get a taxi for the 35 KM trip to Hoi-An (about a 40 min trip; taxi fare was only $17). Could have haggled over the taxi price, but did not want to. Eliane and I hate this Asian practice! During the Da Nang to Hoi-An taxi trip we went through big beach type construction projects; they are putting up Marriot, sheraton and for those of you farmilia with China, Jingling type hi-rise hotels and resorts...horrible!! It seems they are being built, complete with golf courses, for future Chinese tourism. The Chinese are becoming the new "rich Americans" of Asia, it seems. We began to wonder what we were going to be stuck in as Hoi-An must be a Narbonne Plage or Gruissan.... en plus grand! (the reference is to lower cost French resorts on the Med. near the Spanish border) As it turns out, this is true to some extent, but later, as we have got to know Hoi-An, we found other aspects to the town besides just beach tourism, happily. :):) !
Adventures in and around Hoi-An
OK, so here we are in our pre-booked hotel in Hoi-An, for 3 days. Eliane does not like the hotel because of the attitude of the front desk people and I agree, but we are stuck with it as we booked and paid for 3 nights in advance from Hanoi. Not too expensive, though, as it was $45/ night including a big breakfast buffet which included steamed pot stickers! (Chinese dumplings that are goooodd).
OK, we say, as we begin to wander around the old town, which is all fixed up like something out of Disney; how did we end up for 3 days in Disney Land? Still, we decided to splurge on personal transport and rented two bikes for a day ($1.00 / bike / day) and went around to see what we could learn. Traffic on a bicycle is different here; stopping at traffic signals is optional and at un-controlled intersections you just pedal through at a constant speed and everyone avoids you. Now, I am not talking about pedalling through road intersections like around our house in Missouri, I am talking about simply pedalling right across large intersections like Manchester Road and Lindbergh, without stopping or looking! If you stop and look, the others continue as they figure you are watching out for them...that's the system here!! This process is one step crazier than crossing the street in Nanging, China which took some getting used to when we visited that city! The street crossing "system" takes a lot of getting used to and eventually Eliane started to apply her "Hanoi Technique" to cross; she simply closes her eyes half way across and keeps walking or pedalling at a constant rate (I am serious)! It's scary, but it works better than trying to apply the Western street crossing system of looking both ways before you cross, which is dangerous here as nobody can figure out what you are trying to do. Also, if you apply that system you may starve to death waiting for it to be safe to cross to the restaurant on the other side of the street! The secret is: cross at a constant speed and ignore everyone except someone directly in front of you!!
OK, so after 1 1/2 days we had our bearings and Eliane, our senior researcher, found a bicycle tour to sign up for with a company called Heaven and Earth. Turns out this company is owned and run by a 40 something French guy, named Pascal, who looks and talks like he just landed from Vaour (!) (our hippy French village in the Tarn, France) and his Vietnamese wife! We immediately began to feel at home..... So, we signed up for a bicycle tour the next day.
The next morning we arrive at the Heaven and Earth office, which is in a part of the downstairs of Pascal's parents-in-law's house, and meet Pascal and his wife again and a new, assistant Vietnamese guide named Lan. She is 19 years old, speaks great English, but no French though she is taking lessons, and is very pretty (Mark's evaluation!!) with long black hair and a wonderful tan colored skin. It turns out that that tan colored skin in Viet Nam is considered very working class and there is a prejudice against young women unless they have pasty white skin!! The opposite of Europe and the US, but the prejudice is almost as bad as that against Blacks in the US or the way the French think of Moroccans in France!! Anyway, Lan is very cute and when we ask why her English is so good she explains that she has an Australian boy friend. (Matt, Viet Nam is a consideration if nothing works in the US when you start looking for a job next year; keep an open mind!!!!!!!!).
So the tour starts and we trek through some traffic and around the market, which is a crazy version of the Sunday market in St. Antonin,France and then on to the little port to catch a ferry. We load the bikes (10 in the group) onto a rickety, old, wood ferry boat (The steering gear was repaired with re-bar) and take a trip to a residential, local island about 20 min away. The island is a kind of worker's dormitory island, where workers in the kitchens and hotels, etc. of Hoi An live. There is also a small boat yard building traditional wood boats for sale to local fishermen, a wood inlay "factory" and a brick factory. We did not visit the brick factory; however we did visit the boatyard and saw two small 20 ft boats being built. They are made out of solid, tropical hardwood planks, bent to fit the boat shape needed by heating them in a fire. The boat takes about 3 weeks for 2 guys to build and, without engine, these boats are sold for $500 new!! Beautiful boats! After the boat yard we pedal through groups of residences, quite poor housing, and wave at kids and eventually arrive at the wood inlay "factory" where they make items in tropical wood inlayed with mother of pearl for rich Chinese and other tourists. But this is the "factory" and not a tourist shop. Four people are working making the most incredible and intricate stuff, even if its not our kind of thing.
We then bicycle through more "residential" areas and lanes and go to the house of the grandmother of Pascal's wife. Poor, dirt floor structure with the rural Vietnamese house arrangements and the obligatory ancestor's shrine. Lan and Pascal are able to explain some of it to us, including the one table placed in front of the shrine to the ancestors. The table is only used for family meetings, not dinner (it is the only table in the house). For family meetings on important issues, the ancestor spirits are invited as well. Pascal told us the story of there having been a family meeting at the table (with the ancestor spirits invited) to decide if he would be allowed to marry his wife! When the ancestors are consulted, they answer questions by which way a tossed coin lands when flipped....I like the idea! So, Stephanie and Matthias (if you read this) remember that in your homes Mama and Papa want a nice shrine to live in and also to be invited to family meetings, please! It will make us feel needed.......
Pascal and his wife have built a sun shelter/ picnic shelter in the yard in front of the house and we have a great lunch with the group; all is very friendly and we get to ask about aspects of Vietnamese life for workers and people living on the island and working in Hoi-An. We also get to know one another a bit and this is, I think, when we find out that one of the girls in the group is an actress in LA and apparently she is starring in the series "Fringe", which we told Matt to look for. Strange, not the type of person whom we would have expected to come on a kind of "eco" bike tour. She was quite normal and friendly, really. Lunch was fish, rice and some kind of other Vietnamese dish made by Pascal's wife. After lunch, we rode through some of the rice paddies on the island over to a boat landing where an old guy is waiting for us with his boat for a 40 min. tour of the river and then the return to a landing near Pascal's in-law's house / office in Hoi An. Half way through the ferry ride the old boy driving the boat asks me if I would like to drive the boat for a while and I do. I think that people in the group are surprised (!) and I think Elaine preserved this effort in a photo or two. I make it understood to the old guy who owns the boat that the younger boys (from an English family living in Singapore) in the group would probably like a chance to drive. They love it and the old Vietnamese gentleman is beaming! Next, we get the young sister (about 9) of the boys to take the helm, the whole trip is friendly and fun. Anyway, eventually we arrive back at the dock near Pascal's office and we all get off and ride back to his office. This has now been about a 4 1/2 to 5 hr. bike tour (cost is $19 / person including the bike and lunch!!) and we all say our goodbyes to each other, as by this time we are quite friendly. Eliane and I stay on a while to talk to Pascal and his wife; Lan (the young Vietnamese tour guide) asks why we keep flip-flopping between English and French when talking with Pascal..... To her it seems more logical to stick to one language or the other! It is now that we ask Pascal if he knows of anyone doing motorcycle tours and we learn of Mr. Thong Van Do and "Easyrider-HoiAn.com !!
After we finished our bicycle trip we went for a cooking class at a restaurant around the corner from Pascal / Haeven and Earth offices....mmmmmmmmmmm!! (PP again!)
Thong Van Do and Easyrider-Hoi-An.com
OK, so now the motorcycle adventure.
With the phone number given to us by Heaven and Earth Bicycle tours we headed back to our hotel after the cooking class and called Mr. Thong Van Do at Easyeider-Hoi-An.com. His English almost worked over the telephone and he agreed to come to our hotel to talk to us and show us the kind of rides he could provide. Well, 30 min later Thong arrived at the hotel on his 125 Cruiser style Honda single cylinder. The max size of 98 % of the bikes in Viet Nam is 125cc. However, do not underestimate what they can carry; we have seen a 125 cc or smaller transporting two dead pigs; big pigs! Also, we have seen a family of 4 on 125's or smaller!
Thong introduced himself and said that he used to be a "motorcycle taxi" driver and that 7 years ago he started his tour business! Motorcycle taxis are common here; people pile unbelievable amounts of luggage on the back rack of a motorcycle taxi, climb on the back and are taken where ever they want to go.
We explained that we would like a 2 day tour, but that we wanted to each drive a motorcycle our self and we asked if he could provide that. He looked at Eliane somewhat unbelieving, as if to say "can this round eyes really ride a motorcycle?" but said "OK". He answered our enquiry of could he provide 2 extra bikes by indicating "no problemo"; he told us that he had a spare 125 bike and a spare 100 cc bike. Then he suggested a tour where he would take us through the central planes (rice paddies) and then into the central mountains and villages west of Hoi An. He suggested that we come with him now to his home / office and check out the bikes and try them.....then he called his wife and had her come on her 100 cc motorcycle so that both I and MM could be taken at once to his place...
Well, Thong's wife turned up on her bike and and both Thong and his wife had something that passes here as a crash helmet for the passengers, so Eliane and I climbed on the back of the bikes and were driven off into the crazy Vietnamese traffic to the Thong's home. When we got there he proudly showed us some worn but functional bikes; a 125 cc Chinese cruiser style single cylinder motorcycle and a 100 cc Suzuki "Futura" step through type motorcycle with newer looking plastic fairing....OK,....... would these bikes make the trip we wondered? He the suggested that we try them out....I think he wanted to see if Eliane could really ride.
First interesting problem to get used to was the fact that, while the shift pedal is on the left where we would expect to find it, the shift sequence was all down N-1-2-3-4-N-1-2-3-4. The shift pattern was circular, so when you arrived in 4th gear you pressed down again for Neutral and if you pressed again you were suddenly in 1st; this could be bad for the engine and the rider! Well, I tried the 125 cruiser first and had some fun with the gearbox and shift pattern, but I did not crash.... down shifting involved using the rear of the shift pedal to shift in the direction 4-3-2-1-N ...only a 4 speed gearbox. Next up was Elaine and off she went in the street in front of Thong's house. She seemed to figure out the shift pattern quicker than I did and her 100 cc Futura Suzuki was fitted with an automatic clutch as well, not an automatic gearbox, just an automatic (centrifugal), clutch. Elaine did better than I did and impressed Thong. So, we agreed on meeting the next morning at his house and we would take a taxi to get to his place, leave our large back packs at his house and take only our small packs for the trip. He told us the trip would cost 5,120,000 Dong! That price would include the his guiding us on his bike, the extra bikes, all hotel costs for the one night on the road and gasoline, we would pay for meals.....Eliane quickly figured out and I confirmed a bit more slowly, that 5,120,000 Dong equalled $260 US. That seemed a good price and so we agreed on the trip. He then asked for a deposit of 2,000,000 Dong! ....I finally figured out that this was only $100. Thong then signed a contract, written in "sort of" English , with us for the trip. It was agreed that he would come to our hotel at 08:30 and that we would take a taxi and he would give the driver the address to get to his house. He called a taxi for us, after the negotiations, and we left Thong smiling and went back to our hotel....the cost for the taxi back to the hotel was 40,000 d or $2.00!!! The next morning, as promised, there was Thong at our hotel........
To be continued..... We are off now on a sedate bicycle trip around and outside Hue.....includes lunch for $20 / person. We depart at 08:30am and it is now 06:59am, so I had better get Eliane up....slowly as she has been known to bite in the morning...so we can get dressed and have breakfast.
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Well, a bit more on our continuing adventure in Viet Nam........
Continuation of recent story......
Well, we had all our back packs (2 big and 2 small) with us and off we went again by taxi to Thong's house. Another $2 fare..!
Well, we had all our back packs (2 big and 2 small) with us and off we went again by taxi to Thong's house. Another $2 fare..!
We agreed with Thong that we would leave our big packs at his place and take only the small back packs, so we unloaded. Thong was great and had filled up all the motorcycles and had what passes here for crash helmets for Eliane and I to wear. Elaine wondered very loudly whether it was even worth wearing them but I insisted as I said that they had to be better than nothing. Now the moment of truth had arrived......
Thong got on his bike, MM behind on her bike and I was last in line on my bike and off we went to our first road intersection to join the main road out of town. Traffic here is nothing like in the US and even makes traffic in China look disciplined. The white lines in the road are there purely for decoration; traffic lights, which are equipped with the colored lights we know PLUS a count down timer to when the light will change to green, are considered purely optional by drivers. This makes each light like the start of a drag race..... Forget the idea of cameras taking pictures of vehicles running red lights, like in Ellisville MO!!! Everyone leaves the red when there are still 3 seconds to go.....What you do to join traffic or turn right or left is simply look in front of you, don't stop and then just turn. Avoid hitting anything directly in front of you, bicycles, dogs and pedestrians included, and all the other road users will avoid hitting you. Closing ones eyes during the maneuver often helps......even if you are driving a motorcycle!!
OK, so now Elaine and I where on two motorcycles in the main road traffic and trying desperately to keep up with Chief Guide, Thong. We were heading out of Hoi An vaguely west and dodging bicycles, cars and pedestrians at about 50 per minute! The SUV drivers are the worst, as they are the richest and not only believe that they own the road, but also that they own ALL the roads in Viet Nam. They actually will drive down the middle of the road, straddling the double center lines, if any, and expect all motorcycles to get out of their way....SCARY when some big dump truck or bus is doing this and coming straight at you!
Eventually the traffic and shops thinned and we began to get into the countryside where the road dropped down to an almost a 2 lane road. We still had the hazard of oncoming SUV's, trucks and buses, but the road was now passing through rice paddies and had no cross streets. Talk about mud. Growing rice seems to be a very muddy undertaking and uses a lot of water buffalo to pull plows and things. We passed through some small (dirty) villages and more and more rice paddies. All the people seemed to be busy, or as Eliane began to point out, all the women we passed seemed to be busy. I have to agree that the men seem to not work here; or at least their job is to drink coffee and keep a hammock warm!! It is amazing; Eliane is outraged and wants to come back and to help organize a women's liberation movement; I have been driving her nuts by asking why the men should work if the women are willing to do all of it and do not seem to complain about that situation. This whole social structure is extreme as, when you begin to count, you will see 30 or more working women (heavy construction work, planting in the rice paddies, etc.) for every guy you see doing something which resembles a job. When you do see a man working he is generally driving a machine or a water buffalo, or moped, rather than doing something hard! Interesting social system......and most of the women are very pretty as well! Back to the bike trip.........
Amazing, a brick structure almost twice as old as the cathedral in Albi....! so, after learning about the tower, and taking some photos as best we could between the trees, we got back on the bikes and followed Thong towards the hills and the hill tribe villages. We were still in the rice paddies and then we began to get to dryer land and follow a small river on our left. Suddenly Thong turned left and rode down a small track toward the river we were following. We came to the edge and in front of us was a steel wire cable suspension bridge that ran across the river at an altitude of about 100 feet. The bridge was only wide enough to have effectively a one person foot path on it...to pass on the bridge two people traveling in opposite directions would have to turn slightly to pass each other. OK, cool bridge, but then......... Thong proceeds to ride up onto the bridge and across it!!!! Yikes!! The path or surface of the bride was made of wood planks with most of them there, but a few gaps were noted by the eagle eyed traveler, like me, and a few more planks every now and then looked rotten. By this time Thong was across to the other side, had got off his bike and was smiling from the other side....OK, I go first and just keep telling myself to keep moving slowly on the bike and don't stop! I made it across, then it was Eliane's turn.......off she launched on her bike and calmly drove across the bridge with apparently no thought about this not being a standard area to drive a motorcycle!! Talk about a brave soul....I was and am very proud of her! Well, once we were all on the other side of the road we drove on down the foot path which went across more rice paddies and then upwards to dead end in a small village. Some of the houses were what we Westerners would call standard cement construction, but most were rush huts. All these rush huts had families living in them and.....you guessed it, a TV satellite dish! Apparently the government here gives the satellite dish and receiver away free but the family must buy their own TV, which all of them had done. Once in the village some small kids came out and were pointing at us and talking. Of course, no hope to understand what they were giggling about and then Thong whipped out some sweets and handed them out. Eliane was upset as she kept thinking of the kid's teeth, but the kids did not care. They seemed interested in us and were friendly. The next thing that we noticed is that, while this was a real rural village and was not something staged for tourists, all the kids seemed to have cell phones! No kidding, even the youngest one, who I estimate was about 4 years old, seemed to be listening to music on his cell phone or MP3 player! This was, to say the least, a shock to Eliane and I...just like our kids! We spent about 40 min. wandering around the village, followed by the kids, and then it was back to the bikes and....across that suspension bridge again! Later, we did another suspension bride crossing and I thought of Matt's love of heights as I gingerly rode across. Again, Eliane just went across with apparently no worry in the world. She has turned into quite a biker, Marcel would be proud of her!
OK, we are now in Saigon, having arrived last night and I had better go wake MM...gently for our day. More about the mountain trip later.
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Ok Friends,
I last left you when Eliane was riding her motorcycle across very narrow suspension bridges to and from tribal villages in the Central Hills of Viet Nam. Sorry there are no links to photos, but I have not been able to upload anything to Face book from Viet Nam......will do so when I get back to Saint Louis.
So to continue: we exited the last suspension bridge from the village in question and started back on the "main" road (2 lanes at least). Soon we began to exit the flat lands and rice paddies and started upwards into the hills / mountains of Central Viet Nam. It started to sprinkle and so a quick stop was made in order to don the waterproofs Thong had brought for us; really very good waterproofs which would have protected against even an English summer in Manchester. We were pleasantly surprised and the only difficulty in accomplishing the donning of the waterproofs in the light drizzle was in unstrapping the waterproofs from the luggage rack on each bike. The Vietnamese have not heard of bungee cords and so everything, dead pigs, 25 chickens in a cage, a flock of geese or other sundries we saw being transported by motorcycle, are tied on to the luggage rack by a LONG single rubber strap. The strap on our bikes was at least 25 feet long. We have made a note that when we get back to the USA we are sending Thong some industrial strength bungees!
Once the waterproofs were donned, we continued up the hills; Viet Nam is a very beautiful country once you get out of the flat rice paddies. Eventually, Thong stopped on the top of one hill and proudly announced that this hill had been labeled 'Hill 555' by the US Army and that 'Hamburger Hill' was not far away,,,,,,,,something I had no desire to contemplate. Just an aside about Thong's family history which he shared with us; He was born in 1967, right in the thick of the "US War" as he referred to it, and his father was a South Vietnamese soldier. Given the outcome of the war, his father was on the wrong side of everything and when the new government arrived the family was dispossessed of everything. They were then allocated 35 square meters of land ( that's the size of a room for those of you who are not metric) to grow what they could and support themselves. Well, Thong told me that it was basically a bomb crater and that there were some other nearby bomb craters nobody used; Thong's father struck on the idea of filling the craters with water and raising fish, which he then sold at the market to keep his family alive. Talk about resourceful...!! Anyway, it worked and the family was able to survive. Thong says things are easier now and that since 2000 the government has followed the Chinese model and Viet Nam is now, commercially, capitalism gone mad. Similar to what Eliane and I saw saw in Nanjing, China last year. Saigon is certainly serious about soon being competition for Hong Kong ........you should see all the international banks and expats and expensive yuppy shops here. Moral of the story: What the combined US Army, Navy and Air Force was unable to force onto the Vietnamese people during the 1960's through mid 70's, the Vietnamese did to themselves, just as China has done, and in only 10 years!!!! Is there a model here for US policy with Cuba??
OK, on past Hill 555 we rode and on towards some more small tribal (minority mountain peoples) villages, more and more basic was each village than the one before. They all had one thing in common, however....cell phones and satellite dishes. Very interesting to see and find them really weaving the cloth they used for clothes with hand looms they set on the floor and held with their feet......and then excitement, which your scribe missed seeing first hand, occurred:
While we drove through one medium sized village Thong was in the lead, of course, and I was no. 2, with Eliane having decided to bring up the rear. We passed through the village and a few bends later we stopped and waited for Eliane to catch up. That's when she was able to tell me what happened; she said that she had been riding through the last village happily waving to the children (showing off again!) and presumably not looking always in front of her, when a water buffalo (the local people's version of a tractor) decided that he had an important meeting on the other side of the road. I had already passed and suddenly, Eliane reports, the water buffalo came running down the slope from her right and directly in front of her. Well, she applied all her knowledge of emergency braking of motorcycles and managed to avoid hitting the water buffalo broadside. Just to put things into perspective a little bit, Eliane plus the 100 cc motorcycle she was riding had a combined weight of 120 kg to 150 kg,,,,,,,,,a fully grown water buffalo, which she assures me this one was, weighs about 1000 kg! We all know who would have lost, had Elaine broadsided the water buffalo at 45 KPH (30 MPH), and it would not have been the buffalo!!
Well, the trip continued up and down through the hills to our overnight stop in a small town with a couple of hotels. Thong later assured me that he had reserved the 'best' hotel in the town for us. We duly filled in the required police forms and handed our passports over to the lady / owner of the hotel. Anyway, anything you have ever heard about local hotels in the old Soviet Union Siberia or some other Gulag of the old Soviet Union was trumped by this hotel. It was real communist era rough and ready combined with the Asian lack of desire to be clean in public areas. The neon light fixtures had to have been bought second hand, and at a discount, from the KGB headquarters in Moscow when the restored those offices and our host was sure that it was a great deal. Interesting experience.......but we did not freeze and we were out of the rain and off the street and legal. So, what more could one ask for? Then we all headed off for dinner at what can best be best described as a truck stop cafe, Soviet Union style, with strong Asian overtones! The food was OK, actually, but Eliane insisted on using her personal camping chopsticks she had brought along, as she was not sold on the dish washing arrangements of our host! (Eliane was probably right, but so far I have not actually fallen ill with anything identifiable as a result of using the communal pot of chop sticks).
I last left you when Eliane was riding her motorcycle across very narrow suspension bridges to and from tribal villages in the Central Hills of Viet Nam. Sorry there are no links to photos, but I have not been able to upload anything to Face book from Viet Nam......will do so when I get back to Saint Louis.
So to continue: we exited the last suspension bridge from the village in question and started back on the "main" road (2 lanes at least). Soon we began to exit the flat lands and rice paddies and started upwards into the hills / mountains of Central Viet Nam. It started to sprinkle and so a quick stop was made in order to don the waterproofs Thong had brought for us; really very good waterproofs which would have protected against even an English summer in Manchester. We were pleasantly surprised and the only difficulty in accomplishing the donning of the waterproofs in the light drizzle was in unstrapping the waterproofs from the luggage rack on each bike. The Vietnamese have not heard of bungee cords and so everything, dead pigs, 25 chickens in a cage, a flock of geese or other sundries we saw being transported by motorcycle, are tied on to the luggage rack by a LONG single rubber strap. The strap on our bikes was at least 25 feet long. We have made a note that when we get back to the USA we are sending Thong some industrial strength bungees!
Once the waterproofs were donned, we continued up the hills; Viet Nam is a very beautiful country once you get out of the flat rice paddies. Eventually, Thong stopped on the top of one hill and proudly announced that this hill had been labeled 'Hill 555' by the US Army and that 'Hamburger Hill' was not far away,,,,,,,,something I had no desire to contemplate. Just an aside about Thong's family history which he shared with us; He was born in 1967, right in the thick of the "US War" as he referred to it, and his father was a South Vietnamese soldier. Given the outcome of the war, his father was on the wrong side of everything and when the new government arrived the family was dispossessed of everything. They were then allocated 35 square meters of land ( that's the size of a room for those of you who are not metric) to grow what they could and support themselves. Well, Thong told me that it was basically a bomb crater and that there were some other nearby bomb craters nobody used; Thong's father struck on the idea of filling the craters with water and raising fish, which he then sold at the market to keep his family alive. Talk about resourceful...!! Anyway, it worked and the family was able to survive. Thong says things are easier now and that since 2000 the government has followed the Chinese model and Viet Nam is now, commercially, capitalism gone mad. Similar to what Eliane and I saw saw in Nanjing, China last year. Saigon is certainly serious about soon being competition for Hong Kong ........you should see all the international banks and expats and expensive yuppy shops here. Moral of the story: What the combined US Army, Navy and Air Force was unable to force onto the Vietnamese people during the 1960's through mid 70's, the Vietnamese did to themselves, just as China has done, and in only 10 years!!!! Is there a model here for US policy with Cuba??
OK, on past Hill 555 we rode and on towards some more small tribal (minority mountain peoples) villages, more and more basic was each village than the one before. They all had one thing in common, however....cell phones and satellite dishes. Very interesting to see and find them really weaving the cloth they used for clothes with hand looms they set on the floor and held with their feet......and then excitement, which your scribe missed seeing first hand, occurred:
While we drove through one medium sized village Thong was in the lead, of course, and I was no. 2, with Eliane having decided to bring up the rear. We passed through the village and a few bends later we stopped and waited for Eliane to catch up. That's when she was able to tell me what happened; she said that she had been riding through the last village happily waving to the children (showing off again!) and presumably not looking always in front of her, when a water buffalo (the local people's version of a tractor) decided that he had an important meeting on the other side of the road. I had already passed and suddenly, Eliane reports, the water buffalo came running down the slope from her right and directly in front of her. Well, she applied all her knowledge of emergency braking of motorcycles and managed to avoid hitting the water buffalo broadside. Just to put things into perspective a little bit, Eliane plus the 100 cc motorcycle she was riding had a combined weight of 120 kg to 150 kg,,,,,,,,,a fully grown water buffalo, which she assures me this one was, weighs about 1000 kg! We all know who would have lost, had Elaine broadsided the water buffalo at 45 KPH (30 MPH), and it would not have been the buffalo!!
Well, the trip continued up and down through the hills to our overnight stop in a small town with a couple of hotels. Thong later assured me that he had reserved the 'best' hotel in the town for us. We duly filled in the required police forms and handed our passports over to the lady / owner of the hotel. Anyway, anything you have ever heard about local hotels in the old Soviet Union Siberia or some other Gulag of the old Soviet Union was trumped by this hotel. It was real communist era rough and ready combined with the Asian lack of desire to be clean in public areas. The neon light fixtures had to have been bought second hand, and at a discount, from the KGB headquarters in Moscow when the restored those offices and our host was sure that it was a great deal. Interesting experience.......but we did not freeze and we were out of the rain and off the street and legal. So, what more could one ask for? Then we all headed off for dinner at what can best be best described as a truck stop cafe, Soviet Union style, with strong Asian overtones! The food was OK, actually, but Eliane insisted on using her personal camping chopsticks she had brought along, as she was not sold on the dish washing arrangements of our host! (Eliane was probably right, but so far I have not actually fallen ill with anything identifiable as a result of using the communal pot of chop sticks).
Dinner went well and then it was back to the hotel and off to bed. Talk about a stark room; dirty paint on the walls and an overhead neon all added to the impression and experience. Next morning we were up for breakfast with Thong. First we went to a little cafe for coffee located near an open market. The market was open from about 05:30 to 08:00 and was, Thong explained, mainly for laborers before they went off to work. From the coffee shop we went to anther of Thong's haunts for breakfast; Eliane was a little difficult and ended up with what passed for an omelet but I stuck with being local and having Pho (Vietnamese soup with noodles and in this case 'ga' or chicken). While at breakfast Thong received a call from the hotel telling him that one of the bikes had a flat tire, so off we trouped back to the hotel and then Thong took the bike to the local tire repair shop situated curbside, so to speak. When he came back the tire was repaired and seemed to hold air; I was a little surprised that we had not fixed it ourselves, like in my youth when a flat tire occurred. Oh, well, modern bikers may have turned into wimps, even in Viet Nam!
Once the tire repair was over off we rode after tying our stuff back on the luggage rack with that famous 25 ft. long piece of rubber strap. We wandered on through other villages and came to within 45 km (30 miles) of the Lao (Laos) border and the last Vietnamese village, Thong told us, before the Lao(s). As none of us had visas for Lao, we headed back down the hills now going eastward generally toward Hoi-An and Da Nang. We saw many hills and valleys and stopped briefly at a monument to the Ho Chi Minh trail. Thong explained to us that the forests we were travelling through were all managed by the state and that we were going to visit a friend of his who was a forest ranger and was also studying English. Well, when we got to the next village Thong proudly took us to his friend's village shop (his friend's wife ran the shop) and there was Thong's friend, plowing through some Vietnamese / English dictionary trying to translate a complicated English text. The friend was pleased to meet us and have a chance to try out his English. We discussed some use of English words with him and helped him become more familiar with his Vietnamese / English dictionary. Now this dictionary was somewhat of a surprise to us, as in its English to Vietnamese section it was very creative! Under the section for "I" it had a sub-section that had all words beginning with "im" like "impossible, impotent, important" and wait for it "impuberty". That one I really had to wonder about and suggest to our earnest English student that there might be a small error in the dictionary! Has anyone out there heard of "impuberty"??!
We asked our English Student / Forest Ranger why he was studying English when he lived on a hill side in the middle of Central Viet Nam; his reply was that he was interested in English and that such study would also allow him to progress professionally. This was one hard working couple; Husband was a forest ranger and studied English the rest of the time and the wife held down the village store, such as it was. When I asked our new found Ranger buddy what he did in his job he said his main job was checking vehicles for wood illegally cut and being smuggled out of the forest. Nice to see that the government is taking this seriously; maybe they really will be able to manage their forests full of beautiful tropical hardwoods.Even in our dumpy hotel of the night before all the doors and door frames were beautiful mahogany colored solid wood. No one here has any idea what a hollow door is!! Well, back onto the bikes and time to go down the mountain and head toward Hoi An again. we continued down the hill, but this time Thong asked me to ride his Honda 125cc and compare it with the Chinese 125 I had been riding; I tried to refuse, but Thong looked so hurt that I finally relented. Everything was the same; all gears down, then neutral, etc. except that this bike had 5 gears rather than the 4 of the Chinese bike.
So, off we went down the road, clear of traffic and water buffalo (!) and rolling along smoothly when we came to a police roadblock. Eliane and Thong were ahead of me and I was stuck behind a large bus. As I pulled to a stop behind the bus I lost sight of Thong and Eliane and......and the engine died. No problem I thought; strange thing to happen, but no problem. Guess what, when I hit the starter nothing happened as far as the engine starting; in fact it turned over but the engine sounded very dead. The starter spun but not a pop from the engine, which had been running perfectly only a minute ago . I did not believe it was out of gas as we had filled up not so long ago. The bus was still in front of me and I could no longer see Thong and Eliane, but had to presume that they had moved on through the police control. Just as I was thinking all of this through, a smiley policeman appears behind the bus all dressed in a green uniform and waves me on, as it was obvious I had no concealed illegal lumber on the bike! Now what do I do, let's take stock?! Very difficult to explain my situation to the nice policeman; I am stuck on a Honda 125 cc cruiser bike with an apparently dead engine, I am 50 km from the Viet Nam / Laos border and my only Vietnamese / English speaking riding buddy has just ridden off into the distance with my wife following!!! "Velly intersesting", as Schultz of Hogan's hero's would have said!
Well, I got off the bike and pushed it through the roadblock barricade and up to a bend in the road with a bit of a shoulder. Then I briefly tried the starter; diagnosis was the same, a dead engine. I tried the fuel reserve, but as expected, it was not out of gas. OK, not to worry, I had been in situations like this on my BSA A65 and my Norton Commando; if only I had a few tools, I thought. Maybe the factory kit was where it should be, but where was that? A thorough search of the bike revealed what looked like a tool box cover and a lock. Yup, the ignition key would open it and the original Honda tool kit was there!! Good; out came the plug spanner (spark plug wrench for you yanks) and out came the plug then pushed the spark plug back into the plug cap and hit the starter button; not a good spark, but there was a spark. Back in with the plug ..........and low and behold Eliane returns!! She had noticed that I was not behind her and she had stopped to wait. Then the bus I had been behind came past her and she said that the driver signalled her that she should go back and so she did, with visions, she said, of finding me squashed under a bus or dump truck!
I explained to Eliane what had happened and where I was in my diagnostics and then Thong turned up. I showed him the problem and in talking with him I quickly realized that he had no clue how an engine worked. Next step was to drain the float bowl in case we had picked up some water at the last fuel stop...there was no point in hoping that Thong had RAC or Triple A (AAA) cards as he could not even imagine such organizations (the "explain a tree to an Eskimo" problem again!). Happily, this Mikuni carb fitted to this Honda had a real live float bowl drain screw and drain tube; I opened it and let whatever liquid was there run onto the ground until I smelled gasoline. Thong was still bemused as to what I was doing. Next, key on, hit starter button and....the engine fired right up!! Water in the gas.....and Thong now considered me to be a certifiable genius and a real motorcyclist!!! Cool!.
Back on the road again, with me still riding Thongs Honda and expecting it to stop again due to water in the gas, but it never did. Thong was so happy that he insisted on taking us to two other sites and one more village,,,,and now the daylight was beginning to fade and I guessed we were still about 60 km from Hoi An with an average speed of 20 KPH.....I began to wonder, now, about how Eliane would hold up to riding at night,mmmmmm?
We now had Thong's attention and had him promise that we were heading for home. It was now dark and thankfully all the bikes had working headlamps.......then Thong takes a quick right at a fork in the road and we end up on a single track road which soon deteriorates to a single track road, the asphalt disappears so we are now on rutted dirt and...it's rush hour, even in the countryside with bikes pouring out of town in the opposite direction to us!! Things become even more interesting as we come to the next small town and find ourselves confronted not only with lots of oncoming rush hour traffic on what is still a rutted dirt road but SUV's as well and a truck or two. That's when I discovered the pedestrians who had been wandering along in the shadows on the shoulder of the road and....oh, shit, an un-lit cow being chased home by its owner, I kid you not!!!! This was now getting beyond a joke and was even down right scary, and there was my best friend, Eliane, out in front of me with minimal night riding experience and none at all riding on a motocross track after nightfall !!! How would I ever explain this to my mother-in-law if anything happened.......This situation continued for another 30 to 40 minutes on the dark, , rutted portion of the "Ho Chi Minh Trail", going against rush hour traffic before we finally regained something that resembled an asphalt surface and two full lanes; of course there were stillthe SUV's coming at us that did not respect which side of the road they were to stay on!!!
Once we regained the asphalt road I though we were almost "home"...WRONG. It took another 1.5 hrs or more of this night riding qualification, all the time facing oncoming heavy traffic and without face shields, as the ones we had were too scratched to use at night!!
One last left turn in a town before Hoi An, where I lost Eliane and Thong ,and then I finally re-found and caught up with Thong, but where was Eliane? I flagged him down finally and we waited by the curb,........and finally there she was! She had waited for me to make the last left turn and I had driven right past her, she said, and she had had to race through the traffic and play catchup....poor girl!!! I don't think she had signed up for this kind of experience when she met me all those moons ago in Manchester (England)and started riding on the back of motorcycles!
So now you know why I say that we are night qualified on motorcycles in the rush hour on the "Ho Chi Minh Trail"!! Like getting instrument qualified at Kai Tak and flying to minimums with a turn between the apartment buildings......
Eliane will no doubt write, someday, her account of these events.....that should be interesting!
Tonight we are in Saigon; going to have dinner and take a red eye special to Tokyo to start our long trip home to Saint Louis via LAX......about 24 hrs to 36 hrs if you count the 12 hours cooling our heels in Tokyo.
Must sign off now,
Cheers to all of you,
Mark
Well, I got off the bike and pushed it through the roadblock barricade and up to a bend in the road with a bit of a shoulder. Then I briefly tried the starter; diagnosis was the same, a dead engine. I tried the fuel reserve, but as expected, it was not out of gas. OK, not to worry, I had been in situations like this on my BSA A65 and my Norton Commando; if only I had a few tools, I thought. Maybe the factory kit was where it should be, but where was that? A thorough search of the bike revealed what looked like a tool box cover and a lock. Yup, the ignition key would open it and the original Honda tool kit was there!! Good; out came the plug spanner (spark plug wrench for you yanks) and out came the plug then pushed the spark plug back into the plug cap and hit the starter button; not a good spark, but there was a spark. Back in with the plug ..........and low and behold Eliane returns!! She had noticed that I was not behind her and she had stopped to wait. Then the bus I had been behind came past her and she said that the driver signalled her that she should go back and so she did, with visions, she said, of finding me squashed under a bus or dump truck!
I explained to Eliane what had happened and where I was in my diagnostics and then Thong turned up. I showed him the problem and in talking with him I quickly realized that he had no clue how an engine worked. Next step was to drain the float bowl in case we had picked up some water at the last fuel stop...there was no point in hoping that Thong had RAC or Triple A (AAA) cards as he could not even imagine such organizations (the "explain a tree to an Eskimo" problem again!). Happily, this Mikuni carb fitted to this Honda had a real live float bowl drain screw and drain tube; I opened it and let whatever liquid was there run onto the ground until I smelled gasoline. Thong was still bemused as to what I was doing. Next, key on, hit starter button and....the engine fired right up!! Water in the gas.....and Thong now considered me to be a certifiable genius and a real motorcyclist!!! Cool!.
Back on the road again, with me still riding Thongs Honda and expecting it to stop again due to water in the gas, but it never did. Thong was so happy that he insisted on taking us to two other sites and one more village,,,,and now the daylight was beginning to fade and I guessed we were still about 60 km from Hoi An with an average speed of 20 KPH.....I began to wonder, now, about how Eliane would hold up to riding at night,mmmmmm?
We now had Thong's attention and had him promise that we were heading for home. It was now dark and thankfully all the bikes had working headlamps.......then Thong takes a quick right at a fork in the road and we end up on a single track road which soon deteriorates to a single track road, the asphalt disappears so we are now on rutted dirt and...it's rush hour, even in the countryside with bikes pouring out of town in the opposite direction to us!! Things become even more interesting as we come to the next small town and find ourselves confronted not only with lots of oncoming rush hour traffic on what is still a rutted dirt road but SUV's as well and a truck or two. That's when I discovered the pedestrians who had been wandering along in the shadows on the shoulder of the road and....oh, shit, an un-lit cow being chased home by its owner, I kid you not!!!! This was now getting beyond a joke and was even down right scary, and there was my best friend, Eliane, out in front of me with minimal night riding experience and none at all riding on a motocross track after nightfall !!! How would I ever explain this to my mother-in-law if anything happened.......This situation continued for another 30 to 40 minutes on the dark, , rutted portion of the "Ho Chi Minh Trail", going against rush hour traffic before we finally regained something that resembled an asphalt surface and two full lanes; of course there were stillthe SUV's coming at us that did not respect which side of the road they were to stay on!!!
Once we regained the asphalt road I though we were almost "home"...WRONG. It took another 1.5 hrs or more of this night riding qualification, all the time facing oncoming heavy traffic and without face shields, as the ones we had were too scratched to use at night!!
One last left turn in a town before Hoi An, where I lost Eliane and Thong ,and then I finally re-found and caught up with Thong, but where was Eliane? I flagged him down finally and we waited by the curb,........and finally there she was! She had waited for me to make the last left turn and I had driven right past her, she said, and she had had to race through the traffic and play catchup....poor girl!!! I don't think she had signed up for this kind of experience when she met me all those moons ago in Manchester (England)and started riding on the back of motorcycles!
So now you know why I say that we are night qualified on motorcycles in the rush hour on the "Ho Chi Minh Trail"!! Like getting instrument qualified at Kai Tak and flying to minimums with a turn between the apartment buildings......
Eliane will no doubt write, someday, her account of these events.....that should be interesting!
Tonight we are in Saigon; going to have dinner and take a red eye special to Tokyo to start our long trip home to Saint Louis via LAX......about 24 hrs to 36 hrs if you count the 12 hours cooling our heels in Tokyo.
Must sign off now,
Cheers to all of you,
Mark
