Category: Vietnam

I’m selling the bikes today. I’m a little sad, and a little relieved. They weren’t free, and they were quite troublesome. That being said, these two monstrosities truly were the other members of the trip. They had personalities and problems just as much as did Michelle and myself. They became our friends.

The bike sales issue is one that I am sure many people will run into when motorbiking Vietnam, so I’ll try and dig into that a little bit before I get all nostalgic.

Everyone will tell you that there are more bikes in Saigon and less in Hanoi. This is true, but that doesn’t mean the bikes are any good in Saigon or that hard to come by in Hanoi.

Buying the bikes as I did, in Saigon, I had a week to ensure that the repairs on them were made and they were road worthy. Even after taking each of the bikes back to the mechanics and asking him to make further repairs, very little was done. The bikes were repaired only in as much as they looked serviceable and no further. We purchased from a guy named Kevin Raven, who I quite like and who was full of information. The problem may lie in the communication barrier between him and his mechanic, Anh. By the end of the first day, parts were literally falling off of our bikes.

We have spent the first several hours of every day fixing the bikes, and when we finally arrived in Hanoi, the mechanics that Mr. Raven referred us to were too busy to meet for several days until the day before I had to leave Vietnam. The mechanic was brutal in his evaluation of the bikes, and when I made any attempt at negotiation he simply said he would not purchase the bikes and attempted to leave. We got bottom dollar.

This is a tough market, and “the other guys” have the upper hand. Just consign yourself to dealing with it and realize the money isn’t everything. I would recommend going somewhere other than Kevin Raven’s shop for a bike, as the faults we experienced could easily have been deadly if they had happened at the wrong moment. “Gross negligence” is a phrase I would use to describe it… “complete disregard for human life” might be another. Nothing against Kevin, he’s a likable bloke, but I’d rather live to see another American smile.

Today, I can smell the Vietnamese coffee wafting up from the cafe downstairs. I know I’ll miss that, so I have purchased way too much of it to mail back home. My coffee purchase and subsequent shipping costs may amount to the most expensive cup of coffee ever.

I’ll miss Bahn Bao for sure… and even skinny girls, sometimes.

Vietnam hasn’t touched me the way that I thought it would. Most of it I could live without, but it’s the discovery of such personal facts that requires one actually go and sample the place. This country taught me a great deal about myself, people, tolerance, and about my good friend, Michelle. I’ve never seen a Vietnamese family; not  in America. I have seen, kissed, and enjoyed the friendship of Vietnamese girls in the USA, but that’s about as close as I’ve gotten to seeing the other side of things.

These bikes have enabled me to have the most exciting day of riding in my life. They also allowed me to fulfill a dream I shared with one of my closest friends to ride the Hi Van pass. The have allowed me to get away from the cities in Vietnam, where it is so hard to find anything redeeming, and get out into the country and find real people, see the amazing green landscapes and truly find something to love about this place. These two wheels, as usual, spell freedom and peace; things so rare and hard fought for in sections of the world.

Today, though, with the sale of the bikes, comes a different kind of freedom. The need to maintain them, gas them up, lock them up, worry if they are going to kill us; all this is gone. While the bikes ultimately were something of a failure monetarily, they were an enormous success in the memories they helped us create.

This is the lesson Vietnam has driven home. Today, the bikes will be gone. Tomorrow, the money will be gone. The memories and the bonds of friendship forged on this trip will never leave us. The silent moments as we stood on mountain peaks and stared over an emerald series of chasms, the moments the brakes failed, the crashes, and the broken cookies eaten in wonder over Hi Van pass; none of this will ever be lost or can ever be duplicated.

These thoughts are what make days like this tolerable. We are reminded that we get to have more adventures and that we will see these friends again, and that we will make even more friends between now and then. We pat the bikes a solemn farewell and kiss the cheeks of friends and we say our goodbyes promising each other it won’t be forever. Even if it is, even if we never meet in this life again, we will both be richer for these memories we have shared and we should never regret these moments that made us smile.

From roughly March, 20, 2011

What a jumpstart… what do I talk about first…

My guide to Saigon, the city actually named Ho Chi Minh City but I think that name sucks so I am calling it Saigon, is a local named Tom. Tom speaks English. He is self taught… from watching porn and talking to tourists. You can imagine what sort of vocabulary that produces.

Tom is awesome.

I’ve spent the last few days caroming around the city with Tom and have never ceased to be in unabated awe of the things that come out of his mouth in front of other humans.

We sang karaoke in the kitchen of the Reunification Palace.

 

He took me to the best park to get local coffee and people watch.

Showed me how to navigate the traffic of Saigon and even experience my first traffic accident with me.

We both watched in awe as our taxi driver took off with my phone in his hand. And then Tom loaned me his stuntphone for the week.

True blue cool.

Tom and I went out on the town the night before Michelle was to arrive to see what would happen… and “happen” things did. Tom immediately began chatting up some western girls we met and we all agreed to meet up at a bar later in the night.

The bar seemed cool from the outside, though once we were inside, it was pretty clear that we shouldn’t be there. Old westerd guys were being doted on everywhere by beautiful Asian girls in tiny outfits. Fun, and harmless enough, but not what we were looking for. Later that night while walking back to my hotel, two girls on a scooter pulled up alongside me on the curb. The one driving spoke pretty good english, though it was clear from the blank looks that the pristinely beautiful young girl on the back did not.

Then it got weird. The girl on the front explained to me that this was her sister on the back. The driver explained to me that the sister was 16 years old and that she was very clean and I could have  her for a one hour “boom-boom” for $20.

Yes, she used the words “boo-boom”.

At this point, my travel radar was going into high alert. I knew that I was somewhere I should not be and talking to people that I did not need to be talking to, so I quickly checked all around me told the girls, No, thanks,” and got the heck out of there and back to relative safety with Tom.

It is due in no small part to Tom’s help that I was able to quickly and efficiently locate and procure the big blue atlas (the best book for the job), and the two steel horses that will transport Michelle and I across the length of this country; from Saigon in the south, to Ha Noi in the north.

 

Thanks to Krystle from PR, my bike was named Dodge, which encompasses the most basic driving survival skill for riding a motorbike in Vietnam. Michelle, when she met hers, christened it, Jenky. I still don’t know what that means.

Michelle landed in textbook fashion: late. Though, since she was only about 30 minutes behind, she was still about 90 minutes early. It’s hard to describe how your heart can seriously grow wings and shoot through the ceiling when you see an old friend after such a long time. It was like winning the lottery.

Michelle was also kind enough to bring me things from the USA. Things I hadn’t seen in a while and I was pretty happy to get my hands on; deodorant, a watch, a helmet. Important things. Survival things.

There is a shortage of deodorant in Asia.

The following day, Michelle and I ran off to the Ku Chi tunnels for a day or surrealism, and went to meet up for a last night in Saigon with our man about town: Saigon Tom.

  

Many hours of beer, hammers, and bowling later, Miche and I bid a lengthy adieu to Tom and went to get some sleep before we started out long journey up the length of the country the following morning.

It was an early day getting out of town, and we spent a bit too much time talking to Kevin, the guy we got the bikes from, but soon enough we put the rubber to the road for the first time on our great adventure together. The air was wet and electric and charged everything around us with a sense of excitement and danger. In retrospect, that could have just been the feeling of being on the road with so many Asian drivers.

Upon waking on the dang train to Danang, Michelle had some good news for me. The passports were being couriered up to our hotel in Hoi An and would be arriving the following morning. Our hotel in Hoi An knew of the mess and would let us stay there without our passports; flouting government policy. Disaster averted.

This meant, we could kick back and enjoy Hoi An… but first we had to get out of Danang.

When the bikes rolled off the train, Dodge looked much as he had when he went on; minus a couple screws. Jenky on the other hand looked like she had barely survived a UFC bout. Everything was bent, mashed, or just plain missing.

This meant we would spend a few hours enjoying the Danang train station while the nearby mechanic sorted everything out.

We had a nice ride out to Hoi An after stopping at a shop called “The Living Bread” and had, what some consider, the best brownie ever. Upon our arrival in Hoi An, however, Dodge had had enough and refused to start again.

Luckily (?), we were right across the street from a mechanic the likes of which I have never seen. He immediately began pouring shots of some brain numbing local firewater into brazenly unwashed glasses and shoving it at me.

They couldn’t seem to get the bike figured out by the time our shuttle driver got there, so we loaded the bags into the bus and rode to our hotel.

After a little decompression, Michelle went to speak to a tailor and I caught a ride back to pick up Dodge. Everything seemed to be running fine, so we took off on a pathfinding adventure. I wound up near some big pipes that ran across the river, so I parked and walked out on them and just sat and watched the water. I can’t say how long I was there, except it was light when I arrived and dark when I left.

I stopped to check out a restaraunt on the way back, Mr. Long’s, and Mr Long asked to pose for a picture on my bike. Odd, but it turned out to be a great shot. It looks like it fell out of the 1970s.

Miche and I sallied forth in search of food and found jewels and postcards and crazy locals. It was an enjoyable night, but we were both completely wiped out from the train sleep and crashed hard as soon as we got back to the hotel.

Mornings are brilliant with Michelle around. We get up slow, laugh and smile a lot and forget that we have a million miles to ride our steel horses before we can sleep and wake up again. We wandered around downtown Hoi An and found a couple neat little juice and breakfast places to camp out at. We even got some cookies for the road.

After food, we swung by A Dong Silk Tailors to look at making some clothes for me. Suits and Shirts and things rapidly got confusing, so I asked for a plain white work shirt and the one thing I have been unable to find in years of passive searching… a black bow tie.

Now, I just need to learn how to tie this thing.

The morning was gone, and the afternoon was rapidly approaching, and we had something huge ahead of us for the day. The real reason that any of us were in Vietnam, though the idea was originally that of Joe who was only there in spirit; The Hai Van Pass.

Returning to the hotel to pick up the bikes, we found that Reality had other plans. As we arrived to the hotel, the front desk informed us that the courier with our passports had just forgotten to swing by and gone to Hue instead. The next hour was weird answer followed by weirder answer on why the passports were not coming back to us, why the courier did not have them, and why the courier was suddenly no longer a courier, but rather a  bus driver. After an hour of headaches, through some miracle, Zsofi called and was staying in Hue about 100 meters from the place where the passports were being held. After about 20 conference calls, we got Zsofi to pick up the passports and made plans to meet up in a few days in Hanoi.

Finally! We could go to Hai Van Pass! Flying down the road it seemed I could not drive fast enough! Then I realized that Dodge truly was slowing down, drastically, then stopping altogether at the side of the road. Dodge refused to start again.

Michelle, like a true companion, stuck with me while we found a mechanic and sat down to make plans for extending our stay in Hoi An. 30 seconds after we sat down, the mechanic had put a new spark plug in and Dodge was running like a dream. The other spark plug, which had been replaced by Captain Wrinkles the day before, looked like it had come out of another bike after several thousand hard miles.

Scrapping our plans to extend, we hit the road with a fury. Getting through Danang was a pain, but we made it with the guidance of a very friendly and very slow local guy we stopped to ask for directions. Once we got out of town, this is what we found.

The pictures, like my words, simply cannot do justice to this ride. Though, second by a hairsbreadth to the road from Da Lat, this is the greatest coastal ride I have ever seen. Hai Van means “Ocean Clouds.” I see how it got the name.

As much as I enjoyed the ride, I was equally happy to watch Michelle ride. She seems to be listening more and more to the bike every day getting better at gauging road surfaces, throttle and brake response and everything that is necessary to survive on the streets of Vietnam. The roads were quite wet from the mist below and we both slid around a good deal, but no one went down.

On the ride back we exalted in our freedom and the feeling of the wheels beneath us. I stopped to give Hi-5’s to some construction workers and laughed the whole way. Once we made it back to town, we were both flying along with the certainty of trained professionals… which we are not.

Stopping after a roundabout near the edge of Danang, I asked a man on the corner for directions. That’s when I noticed that Michelle was nowhere to be seen. Entering the roundabout, she was right behind me, leaving it 30 meters later, she was gone.

I sat there, hand cramping from holding in the clutch for so long, staring around and wondering what happened until the man that gave me directions had grown so agitated he was in my face and speaking the directions very loudly directly into my goggles and pointing wildly down the road, thinking I had not understood.

I waited. I waited some more. I waited until the light of the day was an exhale on the horizon before I slowly started coasting down the street I thought Michelle must have taken when my phone began ringing.

Michelle had indeed taken this street and was near the end of it with a bike that had simply ground to a halt at Mr. Pizza. Easy enough to find, but less simple to remedy.

After making sure Michelle was ok, we took a look at the bike. Jenky’s rear sprocket had come loose, dumped the chain and been mashed up into the swing arm and associated components. With the leatherman in my pack and some elbow grease, I was able to get the sprocket back on and the chain in place so we could roll it down the street to a mechanics shop. I use the term “shop” loosely.

Everyone was quite helpful, offering gasoline or help fixing the bike. I assured them we had enough xang, gas, and upon seeing the first mechanics “shop” was a plastic bag filled with varying spanners, declined his help. The second mechanic we found was much more official. he had a wooden box instead of a plastic bag. So, seated on the street corner, we tightened the bolts as much as possible, and cleaned up my completely filthy hands with some unknown white powder the mechanic offered me.

I looked at my watch. This was where it got hectic.

It was after 8 p.m. We needed to be on the train by 10:30. After a short conference with the mechanic, Michelle, Jenky, Dodge, and myself, we identified the things that might limit us from making the train.

1. We had not paid for the bikes to be shipped to Hanoi.
2. The shipping office was closed.
3. We needed to try on, and have any adjustments made to, the clothing we had ordered in Hoi An.
4. The tailors were closed.
5. We needed to pack and vacate our hotel room in Hoi An.
6. We were 40 minutes from Hoi An.

I’m still not sure how we did it. Through a breakneck and aggravating 3 hour hurricane we managed to get someone to come open the shipping office and process the bikes, then catch a ride to Hoi An, while Michelle packed the room up, I swung over to the tailors and picked up my shirt and tie. We started a huge riot between competing taxi drivers to get us to the train station, and finally got one of them to give us a ride. We arrived at the station a little after 11 p.m. but still with time to get on the train as it was running about 20 minutes late. I can only imagine that time runs differently in Vietnam, because it seemed then as it does now; impossible.

This entry in the journal seems long, but the day was longer by far. At the end of it all, tired, wrung out, and nearly starving, we arrived on the train car to find 4 old Vietnamese and a 1/2 dozen dirty and disarrayed beds in a train compartment that generated some nasty odor that I couldn’t quite place.

Michelle looked up at me and said, “Feet.”

After the muddy abuse the bikes took the day before, we decided it was time to handle some cosmetic issues with a good bath. This nearly cost me my life.

The bikes both have drum brakes, front and rear, which are not as responsive as the disk brakes I am accustomed to. Driving through the perilous Vietnam streets to the train station, a car cut right in front of me and hit the brakes. I did the same, but as the brakes were soaking wet from the car wash… nothing happened!

Screaming toward my impending demise on my freshly washed chariot, I took evasive action; nearly killing a hello kitty scooter and it’s occupants in doing so. Just part of your balanced Vietnam breakfast. Speaking of breakfast, Mecca seems to be the clear winner for all things foodie in Nha Trang.

After they were all cleaned up, we took the bikes to the train station to be packed up and made ready for the trip to Danang and nearby Hoi An.

I took some time to go do a mini Beach Day routine, minus the tire, on the coastline. The days there were overcast and colder than the south. Locals told me it was warm and sunny last year, but this year is gray and less inviting.

The hotel, Kim Ngan, offered to let us stay a half day extra, checking out at 6 p.m. for a few dollars more, and so we had a spot to shower and hang out for the day.

Everything went relatively smoothly until we were on the train and heading out of town.

I turned to Michelle and asked her to hand me my passport, as I assumed she had them since I had not received them at the hotel. She didn’t have them either. Our hotel, following the quaint Vietnamese tradition of holding each occupants passport during their stay, had neglected to return the passports to us as we paid our bill and left.

So it was, that after more than a year abroad, despite numerous and unsuccesful attempts to steal said passport from me, that it was finally gone; sitting in a drawer, while I was an hour away on the dang train to Danang and not stopping for another 10 hours.

In what I hope was a completely uncharacteristic display, and at a loss for anything to say or do, I handed my phone to Michelle to sort it out, took a sleeping pill, curled up around my helmet, and went to Dreamland to pretend this wasn’t happening.

 

The most exciting day of motorcycling I have ever experienced.

Listen to me, all of you; listen to me, NOW!

Go to Vietnam, get a good motorbike, ride to Da Lat, then take the 723 to the 2 into Nha Trang.

This was amazing.

We rode through mountains so high we actually went above the rainstorm and into the clouds. We rode through beautiful brand new mountain switchback roads. We rode through, and crashed in, gigantic muddy morasses. We broke, and duct taped back together, both our headlights, and multiple indicators.

Go and ride these roads.

Finding a rythum.

The morning turned out to be wildly successful. We found a dedicated suspension shop to replace the whole of Michelle’s rear suspension. Then another shop to add some juice to her battery and replace her spark plug. Jenky was looking good. This is important because we were about to do our longest day yet; 300 km of mountain roads to reach Da Lat in the Central Highlands.

There appear to be only three measurements of distance or time available in Vietnam. 20 minutes, 100 meters, and “go straight.” These are all acceptable as measurements of distance and time as these are the only answers we have received from anyone directing us toward anything for the last three days. At first we believed them. Then we started getting frustrated. Now we just laugh harder every time we hear them.

The ride was amazing; filled with greens the color of eyes from half-remembered dreams. The roads were a winding wilderness wonderland that nearly cost us our lives as much as it was “The time of.”

Though we had a pretty good streak going of gradually increasing the catastrophic mechanical failure to the bikes, Dodge and Jenky, today was flawless. We arrived in Da Lat in perfect working order… late… and in awe of the continuing phenomenon of wildly inaccurate directions.

Protip: The entire city of Da Lat starts shutting down at 9 p.m. and is completely done by 10. Take care of dinner plans early.

Getting better!

6 hours, 180 kilometers, 24 hours behind schedule.

Vietnam is truly a land of smells. Food, manure, fish, ocean, manure… did I say manure? The country side is beautiful. It is also erratic and incongruous.

We managed, with Michelle’s marvelous translation services, to find a truly award winning metalsmith who refashioned my kickstand/footpeg assembly. Dodge is no longer Popeye.

Michelle came up with a name for her bike, eschewing my choice of “Uncle Ho.” Her bike was christened “Jenky” today, for reasons no human will ever understand.

Jenky is also a one legged victim of a day in the country with Michelle. Michelle waved me over about 40 kilometers outside Pan Thiet complaning of a strange grinding noise from the rear of her bike. I, estute observer that I am, was quick to point out what I thought might be causing the problem.

We slowed it down and make it to Mui Ne for the night and have resolved to make it to a suspension shop tomorrow and see what can be done.

I chose these old Honda Wins for the trip as they are popular everywhere and spare parts are cheap and plentiful.

Looks like it was sound logic.

7 hours, 130 kilometers, and we are a day behind schedule.  They have a word for people like us: Overachievers.

Dodge, my filthy conveyance, managed a flat tire to start off with, then towards the end of the day, the left footpeg and kickstand completely broke off the bike. Jenky, Michelle’s bike, started leaking oil and began having problems with the starter.

All in all, it was a good day. noone crashed, noone was injured, and we stayed at a pretty decent hotel called the Tropicana. This was because noone in the next 5 towns could tell us where a hotel was. It was such a foreign concept that we eventually turned around and drove back to one we had seen hours earlier.

Directions to anything are pretty interesting here. It is either 20 minutes or 100 meters. If it is within 5 kilometers, a local will tell you 100 meters. if it is more than that, you will be told it is 20 minutes. by this measure, one could walk the 100 meters in 20 minutes and drive the 20 minutes from Saigon to Hanoi in about two weeks. I think I am going to write an article about debunking Asian ethnic stereotypes… they are all wrong.