This was supposed to be an Easy Day to Cua Lo

Written from Hue, 11/20/2012, under a hot blue sky full of puffy white clouds.  You'd never believe it poured rain half the night and a good deal of yesterday. So this morning is a fine thing and I'll soon find myself forced out of the hotel lobby and off to the beach, so quickly, let me catch up.

I left Sam Son, after one more quick look at the newly created boat on the beach, full of egg sandwich (think toasty crisp baguette, a scrambled egg or two, a long slice of cucumber and a bit of cilantro. . .hold the chili for now. . .) and super sweet milky coffee served with songbirds singing good morning in their bamboo cages all around in the flower vines around the awning on the porch of the coffee shop. . .a rough way to start the day.  Cua Lo is only 120 km more or less down the road.  The turn off that was a horrible trail in 2005 is now a 4-lane road with zero traffic past the three new factories just off the highway.  It leads directly to the intersection at the edge of town where the water was above the top of my engine in the aftermath of a tropical storm last trip. . .I had to push the bike for blocks out of town that time.  What a difference today, with the river and the sea both back where they belong and the streets dry and dusty.

It's the end of the season here too (I've never been here during the high season, but like Sam Son, the town has hotel space for thousands and there were probably 20 of us in town. . .and I the only white guy.  After all the careful planning and notions of an easy day, I didn't stay.  The fishing boat harbor was nearly empty, the boats perhaps at sea, though I've never seen it anything like this. . .and the town all but dead, there was nothing to draw my attention and much of the day was still ahead.  On an off chance though I rode through the harbor to the boat yard near the bridge and found not one, but two new local boats under construction.  I've never seen new construction in this little yard before, only maintenance work, but here they were, and like Sam Son's boats on the beach, these were the first of the local style I'd seen in early stages.  There was a lot to learn in a short time, but I got a good set of photos including the mother, the daughter and the grand daughter of the yard. . .Never miss a chance to photograph a cute kid. . .I'll work on writing up both Sam Son and Cua Lo construction in the next few days. . .and we'll get it up on Boats And Rice (www.boatsandrice.com) sometime soon.

The daughter and grand daughter of the boatyard--a very family operation. . .

New construction in Cua Lo--a traditional style boat adapted well to powering with an engine, it's a shallow-bodied, round bottomed boat (really, 3 chines per side, but the effect is very round),  she'll have a long bow reaching out over the sea and a broad transom lifted just above the water line, a good load carrier and seaworthy, on very little draft. . .just as well,  the fishboat harbor dries, or nearly, over low water every day.

But with that, we were out of town and gone.  With half the day left to run (or more) and a long ways to Hue, where I plan to hold up and rest and write for a while, we settled down to cover some ground.  The highway was just fine and the kilometer markers ticked off steadily and I started to figure the distances that might work out before nightfall.  We seemed to be averaging about 40 km/hr all in, what with towns and open road combined and no stops, so with four hours until dark 160 km more was about the limit.  Dong Hoi was 183 (you have to love the km markers!).  It might as well be the moon, driving a motorbike on the open highway at night is pure idiocy.   Ron was within range, but suffered, in my mind at least, from one serious flaw.  So far as I knew, there was no hotel in town.  The town goes along the highway for a km or two and down from the hwy to the river mouth for another two, but though I'd eaten lunch there and photographed some wonderful boats there. . .I'd never seen a guest house or hotel.  No matter, I've never had to sleep on the shoulder of the road yet, so, with the interesting river mouth waiting, I kept the bike moving toward Ron.  

Of course, there was a little guest house, attached to the same restaurant I'd eaten lunch in years back.  My room was tiny, hardly room for 2 small single beds, but with a huge bathroom. . .who knows?  and it was up 2 flights of really narrow steep stairs with a shaky bannister.  But it was a place for the night with a delightful family to visit with.  The seven year old of the household helped me write up my diary, and read out the dates from the page tops as well as the place names in the headers. . .all written in my long hand!!  I was impressed, but her Mom said she could read when she was five.  This could be another world beater eh??  

Seven years old. . .reading out the dates and place names from my handwriting!

Mom made me a fine supper of rice, sauteed pork slices and greens and tried to keep the kids off my table.  They finally settled for a terrible slapstick Vietnamese comedy on the TV, featuring a young man's attempt to slip his lady friend a sleeping potion (for whatever dark purposes) only to be confronted by her whole family.  Loud, but funny.  The heroine, after her spirited introduction, spent the whole big scene passed out on the bed with everyone shrieking around her.  

And so, on the 19th, early in the morning I was out and about in the harbor and the string bean of village that lines its southern bank--which was as fascinating as ever, although there was no new construction in the yards (though quite a lot of routine maintenance and bottom work).  The older wooden boats here seem to be developing fiberglass skins on their bottoms as a routine thing, and the older traditional style boat that used to be so prominent now seems to be disappearing in favor of the modern "Motor Fishing Vessel" type.  There were no fish being landed at all, but rather bags and bags of snails being brought ashore from boats moored out in the river.  I've no idea how they were harvested, but the fishwives were going through a fair amount of work sorting and rinsing them off, discarding a number of empty shells as they went.  Snail is a popular snack in all the towns "Oc", though I've never seen the appeal. . .small (some of them truly tiny), pretty hard to snag out of their shells, and pretty well rubbery and tasteless, unless dipped in lime juice and salt.  Oh well, I don't have to like every single dish I'm served, and it's fine entertainment to watch everyone doing the snail extractions.

The river-mouth harbor at Ron, sorting snails. . .nice rubbery tasteless little things. . .very popular!

And so, off again toward Hue, 220 km away, in easy reach for a day's riding if I could only stay on track and the road was good, which it turned out to be.  Keeping me on track was harder and, secure in the knowledge that we could easily make Hue by dark, I kept turning off down side roads looking for just one more new boat. . .and found several.  When I set out in 2005 to make one pass down the coast and "photograph every boat in Viet Nam" I had no idea.  Actually, I think they're coming up with new sorts faster than I can find them.  The big hit of the day was at a tiny village called Ly Hoa, which looks quite good sized from the highway.  Not surprising, it has to put all of itself into one long strip along the highway, since the ocean waits hardly 100 meters away beyond the row of homes and shops.  It's another little river mouth harbor and is home to yet another sort of woven bamboo basket boat I'd not seen before (nothing wildly different, but still, this is rather like collecting butterflies--little differences matter!  But I'll spare you another boat photo for now. . .they'll turn up on www.boatsandrice.com someday soon. 

The afternoon run the rest of the way into Hue turned into a rain suit test and I found conclusively that my old suit is finished.  I'd thought it'd be a short little shower so just put on the light old "goretex" (yeah, sure) coat and an old pair of Vietnamese britches.  Fortunately it was a warm rain and the suit cut the wind, so I was only wet, not miserable. Visibility was not so good and we slowed way down from Dong Hoi to Quang Tri, but the rain let up then and I steamed in the rain gear on into Hue.  I seem to be doomed forever to arrive in elegant cities when coated in mud and dust and wearing my most stylish rain gear.  Oh well.  It is good to be here.  

Chu Van An Street from my balcony 9 flights of stairs up. . .I'll give up the balcony and the extra bed later today in exchange for a much shorter climb.   That's the soccer stadium in the back ground.

A Bullseye in Sam Son

Written from Sam Son (Thanh Hoa Province)--17 Nov 2012
Sam Son is the closest seaside resort to Hanoi, though the actual distance and time to travel depends heavily on the state of Highway One, which has been an interesting variable the past couple of years.  They've been widening and upgrading the roadway, which I'm sure will be wonderful someday.  In the meantime, as is always the case here, the highway is also the jobsite.  All the work is done under traffic, by which I mean DIRECTLY under traffic.  We help with the compaction, and when we locate soft spots we proof roll them all to heck.  So for 40 km or thereabouts north of Thanh Hoa City the road is a war zone, complete with tank traps and bomb craters.  That of course makes the bus and truck drivers crankier than usual, so they are much more interested in running motorbikes off what little of the roadbed might be passable.  Makes for interesting riding.  Yesterday was pretty darkly overcast, but there was only one small rain shower, enough to muddy up the highway, so we have dust in our ears, nose, eyes and mustache (ask the bike about her air filter. . .I might have to figure out how to get in to it sometime soon)  BUT ALSO we managed to get a nice crust of mud over most everything.  The pleasures of motorbike travel are intermittent.

So I had to complain about something before I celebrate the arrival in Sam Son.  It's late in their season again (kids are back in school, it's cooling off, nobody's going to the beach) so once again the place is empty, but out on the beach the fishermen are still launching through the little surf, the sailing rafts are still there, and people are still building the classic traditional northern style fishing boat.  These boats are long and slender, descended directly from a sailing hull that goes back who knows how far, and they're built entirely differently from a Western style boat.  Since the western style boats seem to be taking over at a pretty fierce rate all along the Vietnamese coast, displacing the older traditional local styles, I've been very interested in these beautiful sea creatures for several years now and I've never managed to figure out just how they're put together.  I mean, I've crawled through half a dozen of them one way or another, photographing construction details and I've sorted through the trash left over from ripping all the rotten wood out of an old one when it was being rebuilt, so I know pretty much all their secrets, how they're fastened, how they're framed and the placement of their bulkheads and hatches and so forth, but. . .until now I've not understood how it's actually done, starting from scratch.

When I first fell in love--she was beached over the tide in front of Sam Son town, oh so pretty.  As I found out later, this particular one actually is a Christian boat, the cross is not an accident or part of the nav light display (though some of the crosses have red lights at their tips. . )

So arriving here late yesterday afternoon was a direct hit.  There are three of the boats going together out on the beach as we speak.  One is almost complete, even has her engine, shaft and prop.  Another is just a week or two behind, no engine, no deadwood, no caulking, or at least, not complete yet.  The last one was just the bottom, all bolted together and prime painted, something I'd seen once before near Hue. . .but in this case, the port side was complete up to the rub rail, and lying on the sand next to the bottom, its heat-bent stern propped up in the air, and two men working along cutting the bevel on its lower edge.  The starboard side lay close alongside on the proper side of the boat, the stern planking complete and toasting over the fire bending up into shape.  The forward end of the side was still under construction, with an older/wiser fellow and two younger men fitting more planks to finish out the starboard bow.  They use slices cut from the tree whichever way the tree grew, so the two sides end up the same shape, but the run of planking goes every which way, with pieces scarfed in wherever/however needed, and sometimes some amazing timber flaws left to be remedied during the caulking.

Almost finished. . .nothing new here. . .but on down the beach

Okay. . .so. . .it's not exactly the Mona Lisa, but what you have here is the port side, complete up to the rubrail (lacking all framing but the one temporary cleat) all edge nailed and bent into the stern curve, and somehow laid out in the necessary shape to turn into a boat. . .and in the background, the bottom, complete, including the transverse framing and primer (probably the only paint it'll get in the hold).  The starboard side, across the way, is a little behind, planks still being fitted into the forward end.

It couldn't have been clearer if it were written in foot-high letters in bright red.  These boats are not planked up on frames.  Rather the foundation, the bottom, is completed, then the sides up to the rubrail are built flat on the ground on either side, and in one grand move they're hoisted into place and the three key pieces are stitched together to build a boat.  There's hardly a bit of framing on the sides when they're raised.  Rather (and this is typical of small and traditional boats in much of Viet Nam) they're just edge nailed together.  In this case, with hand forged spikes about 6" long, square and tapered full length.  A chiseled notch is cut for each nail on the face of the upper plank and a leading hole is drilled through into the lower plank.  The spike is given a slight bend so that it tends to stay centered in the lower plank. . .though that's not a perfect thing.

The rest of the process is perfectly clear now, the individually fitted upper ribs with their hockey stick ends will be added after the sides are up, the deck beams and decking, hatch coamings and cabin top framing all added in due course.

Anyway, this probably ranks somewhere below finding the Rosetta Stone (and knowing what it was!!) but for me and my poking around Vietnamese boat yards and harbors the past few years, this is right there in the same category.

So I'm spending an extra day in Sam Son this year and won't move on to Cua Lo until tomorrow after lunch (I'll try to time it so I'm there well before dark this time).  And there's this to look forward to. . .no typhoon this trip, no flooding!  If the road is whole it'll be a pleasure jaunt.  Maybe I'd better give myself an extra hour or two.  H'mm.  For now I need to get back to the beach, no knowing what they've been up to while I'm drinking tea in the shade.

A Photo Delivery and the Long Haul Home--Bac Ha to Hanoi

Written in Hanoi, 11/15/2012
When last we spoke I had just dragged my muddy body into Bac Ha on the back of my muddy motorbike on the edge of the evening (not quite full dark).  Beaten but unbroken (nothing even badly bent really), we'd been through a grueling ride across the mountains from Xin Man in Ha Giang province.  Don't try that one with a bike you cherish.  The Little Horse is only now speaking to me in a civil tone again.

Bac Ha is a favorite spot of mine. . .I have favorite spots all over Viet Nam of course, but I've come here every trip since 2005 and will be surprised if I ever give it a miss. . .though I never stay long any more.  It's not the town itself, charming as it is, but the whole area surrounding.  Bac Ha lies in a high mountain valley (and the nights are cool even in warm months).  It's a town run by Vietnamese, but surrounded by "ethnic minorities" or mountain farmers, mainly Flower Hmong, but also (I think) some Black Tai. There are small roads through the mountains leading to even smaller little towns farther back from the highway. . .so it's a motorbike paradise of a sort. . .fun roads to ride, wonderful views across the mountains, and lots of interesting people doing a lot of things straight out of the middle ages. . .well. . .at least before the big machine age.  They farm with buffalo plows, hoes and mattocks, hand sickles, threshing boxes, and enthusiasm.  The young women will swing a hoe or a mattock and turn over the steep hillside fields by hand with a baby strapped to their backs, or clear brush with a machete. . .all day long.  They'll pack their day's pickings up (or down as the case may be) hillside trails too steep for a white guy to stand on, one foot at a time, as though there were nothing to it.  Their men are tall and straight (and often wear handsome black "Chinese" shirts and knee length trousers. . .or not of course, many wear stuff you'd find in Seattle instead.  The ladies though, right down to the toddlers wear incredible bright clothes, layers and layers of them, with relatively short skirts and leg wrappings from their ankles on up.  They live essentially outside in all weather (so an umbrella tucked under her arm is always part of a woman's clothing except on the most unambiguously sunny day).  Even their houses are very open air, with the gable ends of the roofs open to let out the cooking smoke.  What they can't carry themselves they pack on smart little ponies, about the size and stature of a Welsh pony, but maybe smarter and better on steep ground.

Much of the time you'll encounter them walking along the road, men, women, children, all carrying pack baskets (very nice ones, with fiber-padded shoulder straps) always talking and smiling and carrying on.  During the work day they'll probably be in the fields working the soil, planting or harvesting, but if not, they'll be higher up the mountains in the steep woodlands, picking wild food. . .often bamboo shoots, and greens I've no idea of.  They carve their own plows out of local wood by hand (and shoe them with hand forged  plowshares they buy in the town from an itinerant forge.  All told, they are  admirable, hard working people who manage to squeeze a surprisingly full life out of terribly steep mountainsides.

So Bac Ha wouldn't have to be a great place to draw me back.  I would go for the mountains and their people even if the town were no good.  Fortunately, that's not a problem.

This trip I was on a mission.  On my last visit here I walked out along a side-valley road and found some beautiful kids leaning on a porch railing on the hill just above the road.  I stopped and offered to take their photos and they agreed. . .and posed like models.  Beautiful kids, and one of them was simply astonishing. . .she was blonde and fair.  As I took the photos I had it in my mind that this was only the second or third blonde child I'd seen in Viet Nam.  Well, it was over in just a few moments and they scampered off and I walked on.

How's that for a lineup??

And they just get cuter. . .

And we have to get the baby brother in too. . .

 Fast forward to me at home months ago admiring those bright smiling kids in the pictures and then digging through the thousands of photos I've brought back since 2005, trying to find the others.  And I did.  I believe the correct exclamation is "WooHoo" or something like that.  To my complete delight I realized THEY WERE THE SAME KIDS.  Well. . .the blond girl was one of them and two or three of the others were in both sets of photos, simply a few years apart. Goodness.

So I was a little dense. . .but there they are again.

On further reflection it's not at all unreasonable.  I've walked out that side-valley road three or four times over the  years, it's pleasantly level and leads out into interesting farms eventually.  I've watched people reaping rice with hand sickles there and been invited to try it myself (it's easy to cut the bunches of grain, much trickier to twist one's stem around and tie it off neatly so the bundle lies intact to be picked up later).  So. . .confronted years back with a blonde kid (small, grubby faced and bare footed) playing with her friends, and all of them willing to be photographed for a moment at least. . .I of course took the pictures.  When it happened again, more or less the same, and certainly within thirty feet of the same place, just a few years later, you'd think I'd have remembered at once, but no.

So I rode into town, muddied and bloodied but unstopped. . .carrying five nice enlargements, laminated in plastic.   Not three sets.  Dang.  Sometimes I can be pretty dense.  No matter, I was on a mission, and in the near darkness stopped just short of where I thought I should be, at a small fork in the road.  People on a porch looked at my photos and pointed me on down the road, and a few hundred feet later I spotted the porch railing from the recent pictures.  But there was no one in sight and no one answered my hail.  H'mm.  Then a tiny little girl, six at most, with a three year old brother riding piggy back came out from behind a wood pile and came close enough to see what I was holding out.  I asked which house these people were from and she pointed to each individual and then to a nearby house, chattering all the while.  The chatter of course meant nothing to me. . .just that I was in the right place and I had three houses to visit.  I asked for her parents ("Bo, Me o' dau??) and she told me they weren't home, so I asked if she could take me to the other houses. . .and she did.

Well, by the time it was all over I'd been in all three homes, met all six parents, most of the siblings and what must have been a number of other kids, and a few grown up neighbors.  I'd been offered strong drink and tea (and declined both, I was falling down tired, not to mention dripping dusty mud).  The single set of photos eventually got distributed somehow, they all laughed and handed pictures all around (plastic laminate, a great idea) and shortly, I staggered back to the bike, to my hotel, up the stairs, and into a shower, all standing.  Then stripped and scrubbed the muddy mess and hung it all to dry under the fan for the night.  

And so. . .at ten seconds before six in the morning, as it always has, the loudspeaker on the mountain behind the hotel went "ping, ping, ping, ping and Radio Hanoi started our day with music and the news.  Hooray.
I got around, found breakfast in another little place with a young man who really wanted to practice English while he waited on tables (and I was the only early diner for a bit), so we had a good visit.  There was a little while to wait for a bike wash to open, so I dawdled over coffee and noodle soup then walked around the nearly deserted market (Bac Ha is a Saturday market I think. . .I've been there twice at the right time.  What a difference. . .some permanent stalls around the perimeter are open, people have fresh pork (still being chopped into salable portions) and a few ladies have fresh vegetables spread out for sale.  A small contingent of moonshiners sit and stand with their five gallon (20 liter?) plastic jugs full of white lightning (why carry the whole grain down the mountain. . .first distill it and THEN carry it down to town.  A hardware shop nearby sells smaller jugs in all sizes, pick your jug and fill it up.  Plan on a headache though, it's strong enough to run a motorbike on.

Supervising loading vegetables in the empty market square--Bac Ha

Darn it, there has to be a customer around here somewhere--fresh pork in the market every morning--Bac Ha

White lightning transaction--corn liquor distilled on the mountainsides--it's good enough to run a moto on, but better (?) for drinking,  I normally do not photograph the Hmong women here, they are photographed half to death on market days when busloads of tourists are brought in to shop and shoot.  This was done in stealth mode (shame on me) with the camera at waist level, composing the photo on a tilted swivel screen while I looked the other way.  I guess I got away with it this time. . .

The little mountain ponies carry packs on the mountain sides but also work well in harness.  They're incredibly smart and work to voice commands really well.  To watch one back up to dump a load of bricks or rock is a real treat. . .they'll throw themselves nearly over the top to move the load back, so much you'd think they were bucking in terror, but they'll also TURN RIGHT OR LEFT AS THEY BACK!!  Then they'll stop, the driver will cast off the breast band, the shafts will fly up and the load will dump. . .whereupon the pony, harness and all, will look around for something green to nosh!

The bike washed and the clutch cable taken in a turn or two, the room bill paid once again, passport retrieved and keys turned in, we slowed down at the gas station long enough to fill up. . .and left.  Mission, more or less, accomplished.

The rest of the day (yesterday now, Wednesday the 14th, was spent in the saddle and on the road.  It's a run I've made many times now. several times I've done it in a single day, though if anything is out of place it's too far for that, 340 km I think, though I haven't taped it off lately, or checked the odometer.  This year Hwy 70, the main route to the Northwestern Chinese border from Hanoi  is in excellent shape except for the traffic, which builds as you go south.  The road is wonderfully winding for a long ways, still hemmed in, though it's mainly level, by mountains on both sides.  There are wonderful old farmsteads to see and  all manner of interesting shops and workshops along the way, constant entertainment.  But it wasn't a day for stopping, it rained at first, foggy too while we were still on the mountain.  The little horse, clean and shiny just a bit ago (but still enjoying the fresh oil on her chain) simply hummed along at 50 kmh, pretty much her favorite speed, winding through the hills and carrying me back home to Hanoi.  There were some shocks along the way. . .there were three overturned trucks.  One was almost funny (and nobody was likely hurt much if at all).  A small dump truck was poodling along a country lane a few hundred feet off the highway with a big load of crushed rock. . .when the shoulder of the road gave way and down he came, into the dry rice paddy, spilling his whole load in a neat pile.  The other two were much grimmer, and there were likely fatalities involved.  They were both semis, still a new creature on these highways, and I fear they are not fully understood yet.  It's just my suspicion, but I'm sure they're routinely badly overloaded. . .and most likely loaded top heavy.  And, like most trucks here, they drive hard to make their schedules. Too hard, especially through towns.  The worst crashed at a corner in the town of Pho Rang, very close to the shop fronts.  We did not stop to be sure but there was probably structural damage to three buildings, and if there were any people there when it happened, they are not now.  It went down on the driver side, and there was a lot of cab damage too, so. . .altogether a grim scene, which was only made worse by the steady stream of diesel still draining from his tanks out onto the street and down the drainage.  The traffic had already tracked the fuel both ways down the road which was unnaturally slippery. . .and the whole town stank.  No doubt the asphalt will be ruined as well. . .I think diesel and asphalt do not do well together.

And there was a motorbike-car-truck crash farther south. . .clearly being investigated as a fatality. That's a terrible toll for a single day on 340 km of highway. . .and it makes it clear again how very important is defensive driving. . .and good luck.

But we rode through it all, never stopping but once for fuel and once to pay a speeding ticket!!  Going through Vinh Yen, about 80 km from home, they pulled us over for 52 in a 40 zone.  Oh my.  Those are just kilometers, but the numbers speak for themselves. . .it cost $35 ($700,000 VND). . .but interestingly, they didn't even flinch at my US driver's license.  H'mm.  Well, I was pacing the truck traffic through town, so no doubt the numbers are right (I never saw the radar gun though), and from the tall stack of receipts, and the long list in the cash book, I was far from the first. . .they'd made a good day of it, and obviously a lot of people hadn't had the cash with them (that's a lot of money here) and there was another large stack of paperwork, each sheet paper clipped to somebody's driver's license.  H'mm.  Lesson learned.

So, one more time we rode into Hanoi rush hour traffic in the dark, crusted with mud among the dry and neatly dressed commuters headed home for the night.  It was perhaps the worst crowd I've ever ridden in, completely jammed roadway--stop and go for many kilometers along the dike road with thousands of frustrated people making very interesting split second decisions. . .and then the desperate few blocks on side streets to the hotel.  Where they acted happy to see me. . .yet again.  You have to love this place. . .

Triumph and Tribulation--Ha Giang to Bac Ha

Written from Hanoi, 15 November 2012.
Having arrived at Ha Giang city through the easy route up Hwy 2 along a swift flowing mountain river, I felt as though I'd done the thing all wrong.  To come to the province town of a most-mountainous district by riding a fine, level highway up a long valley just wasn't right.  So I studied the route onward to Bac Ha, where I hoped to deliver some cute-kid photos dating back several years.  It really isn't very far from Ha Giang City to Bac Ha, if you can fly and don't mind flying over mountains.  By road it's a different matter, there are two possible routes.  I'd already ridden much of the easy route on other trips, south a long ways on Hwy 2 and then across the southern margin of the mountains to the town of Pho Rang on Hwy 70, thence on a fine road (er, when it's a road at all. . .once I drove it as a construction site and then it was awful, but that was in 2010 and now it is again a fine road) anyway, after 40 km or so on Hwy 70 it's a 28 km climb on what has sometimes been a perfectly nice road up to Bac Ha in its high mountain valley.

There is an alternate I'd never ridden, apparently across the mountains directly (??) to Bac Ha.  The road starts out, so says the road atlas, as a "paved road, lower quality".  That might mean the finest sort of riding, narrow winding pavement, or it might, of course mean a disaster if the bones of the road are all broken and the gaps between the bits of asphalt are deep and wet, and yes, I've ridden on those roads and no, they aren't that much fun.  However, 111 km into the mountain route at a town called Xin Man (say it "Sin Mun", with the Sin going up and the Mun going down. . .) at Xin Man, as I was saying, the map shows a change to a smaller sort of road, not clearly defined as paved or not, which runs onward for a ways (8 km as I now know) and then turns to a thin brown line on the paper.  I didn't really need to consult the legend in the front of the road atlas to understand that was a small road, but I looked anyway. . ."dirt road, poor quality".  The only lesser road to find is a thin DASHED line in the same muddy brown "a track or trail".  Having fallen in bad going once already on this trip, I finally settled on the known, easy route South around, though it felt like it might somehow be a loss.  But my Atlas is several years old now and it is possible things might have changed, so I asked at  the hotel desk as I left Ha Giang and the gentleman, who seemed very assured, said in fact the road does go through all the way to Bac Ha.  In Vietnamese the expression is "di duoc", which translates directly as "goes enough" and generally means more or less "a good road".  He gave directions to the intersection that were correct to the exact km, which was reassuring, but I was still settled on the known run, which would deliver me right way up to Bac Ha in five or six hours of pleasant riding.

Forty six km south of Ha Giang, exactly where he'd said, I found the unmarked crossroads and asked the first passerby if it was the road to Bac Ha and got a firm, smiling yes, the road goes to Bac Ha.  H'mm.  It started out looking like any in-town street, so I rode a short ways out of town and found a fine, if very narrow, 2-lane road headed immediately up the mountainside (there was nowhere else to go!).  I stopped to stare and meditate a moment and two men nearby showed interest, so I asked one more time (three's the charm) and they confirmed, for a third time, "this road goes to Bac Ha enough".  That was clear.  So much for the easy south-about route.  I put the  little horse to the climb and she snarled and growled in 2nd and 3rd gear, seemingly forever, up a tangle of switchbacks far above the valley.

It was just marvelous.  The pavement was smooth, most of the curves were nicely banked, though so sharp and steep that we stayed in lower gears, and the views got better every moment.  The day was hazy, sad to say, so there are no long vista photographs of the distant peaks, but even so, it was lovely.  But not fast!  In low gears, climbing and descending constantly, and running far back into side valleys before doubling back to the main route, the first 71 kilometers took until 1:30 in the afternoon and brought us to the tiny mountain town of Vinh Quang.  From a hotel-for-the-night standpoint, this was the point of no return, and also a dandy place for a good sit down lunch.  So I ate the lunch (rice, spicy sweet bits of ribs, tofu and tomato, sauteed vegetables and a bowl of chicken broth with a mass of greens and a very nice whole chicken foot (what are  you supposed to do with a foot??), which I know is supposed to be a delicacy.  And one last time, I asked a man on a motorbike, clearly a local rider. . ."does the road go to Bac Ha?" and again, got the answer,  "duong di duoc", "the road goes enough".  Onward then, committed to the crossing, one way or another.  In the back of my mind I knew I had a good poncho, rain gear, a coat and could bivouac in the mountains if I had to, but I wasn't dwelling on that.  Besides, the road was still plain and simply marvelous.  All morning we'd had views of the terraced fields below, the shapes, not intentionally artistic, but forced by the contours of the land into lovely organic patterns that delighted the eye.  We stopped often to see the view (in order to avoid driving off the road and INTO the view. . .) and took a number of photos.  It was rather like the day I shot a hundred-odd photos of mountain goat moms and their kids in Montana. . .you simply have to be there to understand the urge!  Anyway, the road was different from Vinh Quang to Xin Manh, more in the river valley for a while, and not so much on the ridges and, with very little exception, reassuringly excellent.  There was very little heavy traffic (and none of it REALLY heavy, the largest was a two-axle fuel tanker), and nobody was being stupid on the always-turning road.

The terraces are not deliberately beautiful, they simply turn out that way as they follow a level grade along the mountain side.  A map-reading class would understand contour lines in a moment if they could just see these!!

Making a terrace big enough for the farmhouse is not easy.  Some of the homes have the downhill side 25' in the air, with the front door at ground level.  No back door!

Leaving town after lunch, no really, there's a town back there. . .well. . .it's not very wide, but several blocks long, and an excellent sit-down lunch place--Vinh Quang, Ha Giang province.  

Okay, this gives a better perspective of Vinh Quang.  There really is a town there!

After the third pretty water fall I gave up on photography. . .there were too many.

Riding into Xin Man. The road onward leads over the ridge beyond, far far over.  Tolkein would have called this the "last homely place this side of the mountains".  There are stone trolls beyond.

I thought to myself, "this is the grandest ride of my life!  What a marvel!  What a fine choice!!".  At Xin Man the road simply forked and stopped right on the edge of town.  Both forks lead into small neighborhoods and neither looked like a through road. There had been kilometer markers faithfully all day, but at this critical point there was not a sign to be seen.  I stood astride the bike and stared while the populace studiously and politely ignored me.  Finally I spoke loudly, without eye contact anywhere, and asked "which road goes to Bac Ha??"  The youngster nearest me, checking tire pressure on his cargo-bike (big added shocks and a wide rack behind his seat) looked over his shoulder, not seeming overly friendly, and pointed uphill to the right.  That street ran under a typical neighborhood entry-arch, red background and a welcome sign above the roadway.  It did not look like the road out of town, but he'd been quite clear.  I said thank you very much and turned up the hill.  In a moment or two he passed me with a burst of throttle and never a look back.  We dodged on the narrow grassy verge past an excavator lumbering up the street and then the dump truck that was leading the way and came to another fork.  I took the obvious route to the right, much better looking route, and was surprised to hear a very loud shout.  It was my cargo rider, stopped a ways up the left fork and waving vigorously.  I hadn't realized he was leading the way, but was tickled to follow him past a series of equally unmarked and obscure forks in the little road.  We climbed sharply out of town for a short ways, and, having obviously passed the last confusion, he stopped, turned, smiled and pointed up the mountain.  Di Bac Ha!  "Go to Bac Ha!"  I stopped, bowed deeply in the saddle and reached to shake his hand.  He squeezed hard and smiled at my thanks.  It was a fine send off!

If you use a magnifying glass, or at least look closely at the road atlas, you'll see that there is an uncolored double line, perhaps 3/4" long, drawn with a very fine pen indicating the road just beyond Xin Man.  It was a concrete road about eight feet wide and nicely done.  It also climbed the mountainside in second gear, dropping into first for the switchbacks.  Very quickly we climbed out of the Xin Man valley toward what had looked like the peak above town, and soon passed it and continued to climb, leaving Xin Man far  behind.  I'd not properly studied this bit of the route I admit, and was convinced there were only 21 km to cross over to the Bac Ha side.  There were actually kilometer markings along for over 8 km, each one indicating Bac Ha in the near distance. . .12 km, 11 km, 10 km.  And, for all that it was steep, still the going was pretty good.  I was delighted!  Don't count your chickens until you're actually across the mountain

Climbing out of Xin Man toward Bac Ha.  In another 8 km we'd climbed into the cloud base and visibility was gray and  dripping wet.  At times you could barely see 100 feet.  The road was horrendous and there was no more photography.  Rather, it was quite serious work to get over the mountains.

The roadway roughened to a bad track of broken pavement and stones twice for a quarter mile or so but resumed its excellent condition on a ways further.  Finally we came to a province-boundary sign, like so many others, it read, in Vietnamese, "See you Again, Ha Giang", and like so many, had an English translation, but this was different:  "Hello from Ha Giang.  Goodbye.  Good Luck".  Oh dear.  In fifty feet the road changed to a very rough Cat track, coarse quarry run shot rock roughly bulldozed into a "road" passable by. . .well. . .a bulldozer.  I thought to myself (in my ignorance) a)  it can't go on like this very far, everyone has said the road "goes enough".  b) we only have maybe 9 km to go, even if it is like this, we might make it. . .

Wrong on both counts.  But, as I said before, the point of no return was miles ago and I really believed we were only 9 km from town.  I could just about push the bike that far before full dark (on a flat smooth road, h'mm).  The cat trail ran further uphill, very steeply in places (the hill was very steep and no doubt the bulldozer made the road by pushing more or less straight downhill. . .) and then into the lower limit of the cloud cover.  Visibility dropped to a hundred feet or less, the rocks dripped water, my glasses misted over and I slammed the bike constantly into horrible rocks, slipping the clutch in low gear.  I've never imagined punishing a machine like that, bouncing off rocks, bottoming out the shocks, and demanding she climb always higher, engine snarling and clutch slipping.  Stop and reflect on what she really is, an inexpensive ($500) Chinese copy of an old Honda 110 cc motorbike.  She has narrow street tires, spindly forks, tin fenders (I swear the chrome plate is the thick part) and minuscule shock absorbers.  She might have a little more horsepower than my lawn mower at home, but maybe not.  These mountains are full of her sisters though, many of them lugging hundreds of pounds of cargo over the local roads with their daring young men.  I understand why now.

The actual distance, according to the atlas is 21 km OF THE BAD ROAD.  It's really pretty plain to read after you've driven the distance and know the truth.  It did not get better until the last kilometer.  In fact, I didn't fall the first time until quite near the end.  It was when we rode out of the rocks into new construction and onto. . .you guessed it. . .red clay fill material, and as before, I found the right combination of swooping hollow, conflicting ruts and the right degree of moisture to produce a graceless splat, pinning my right leg (that's the camera side, by the way, as well as the exhaust).  I lost the shoe in that argument and didn't get it back until I'd stumbled and grumbled and stood the bike back up in our mudhole.  A mile or so later, having taken what looked like the best track around a horrible long mud hole I was cut off by a brand new drainage ditch, over which there was no going. . .and turning back and rejoining the road into the clay bog ahead we went down again.  She nearly stood herself up, I was in such a state.  I'm sure she knew I was cursing the road and not the horse, but no doubt she was intimidated, let me up with both shoes on and stood up herself when I heaved on the handlebars.

We arrived in town at deep dusk, covered in mud (both of us) and happy just to be alive and there.  The bike wash I usually visit was already closed for the day, and I still had my cute kid pictures to deliver, so we drove down the side-valley road, had to ask once which house the kids were from, got the last 100 meters worth of directions, and, as I knew we would, found them.  That was quite the ride to deliver five photographs!  But that's another story.

A Road Trip Across the Northern Frontier. Sort of.

Written from Ha Giang City, 22 km southeast of the Chinese border, at the northern terminus of Hwy 2.  I didn't get here fair and square though.

It all started according to plan, we ran north out of Cam Pha (where I left you) through both coal dust mud and coal dust dust. . .got it both ways in one morning.  Black bike.  Gray trim.  We kept to the plan for quite a ways, spent the first night out in a scenic little isolated spot, called Na Sam. ..which, with diacritical marks is pronounced "Naw Some" but it isn't much really.  Sort of a fork-in-the-road kind of a place, with a major bridge for one of the forks, so it was probably worth starting a little town there.  Just wasn't enough business to make it into a very large little town.  So you have towering limestone cliffs, turbulent river, an interesting old dam, a really quite nice covered market, with twenty ladies outside sitting in a row and selling fresh soft tofu in linen napkins (they take off the napkin and slip your curd into a plastic bag and it's very very bland.  and soft.) On the other hand, there are also at least fifteen ladies and a couple of men selling slices of crispy roast pig, cut from wherever you want it.  Wow.  And there's a little bakery that made soft white not-baguettes and really excellent little coconut pastry.  I ate them both.

The town has one hotel, which was how many I needed, but a little competition would have done this one some good.  Old.  Ugly.  Big.  Empty (duh) and the staff was not terribly interested.  But it was clean and dry and the mattress was sleep-able.  You have to focus on the important things!  (Ed note:  He could have stayed the night in the lap of luxury in the city (Dang Dong)  if he hadn't been playing the fool and trying to get another 40 km before dark. . .he knows better.)

The road getting to Naw Some was a little dubious but not bad really, there'd been some goshawful repairs early in the day but nothing to stop you.  So leaving in the morning I didn't expect much worse.  That'll teach you.  The not-too-bad continued a ways and then went all to heck.  There was something on the order of ten miles of the worst sort of construction.  The old roadway was obliterated, a long stretch of mountainside was being cut back and armored (must have slid last wet season) and much of the road was just at the pioneered-through stage.  The basic fill material was a red clay (with colorful seams of white).  When I passed a big Hyundai 4-axle freighter (two drivers aft and two steerers forward, used to be the biggest freighter on the roads here. . .truly impressive trucks) when I passed the big Hyundai, as I was saying, it had slid off the road (rear wheels slid sideways down the crown of the "road", obviously no traction, clear off the "road" while the front wheels were skidding against counter-steer).  Yes, I knew things were getting bad.  Those trucks go pretty much wherever they want.

So I carried on (bike had nothing to say about it) and we dumped a half mile later at walking speed.  There was simply no friction to the damp clay at all, a huge boil of clay pushed up by a truck and a corresponding deep hole, and there was nowhere to go (you can't climb out of the rut you're in after you commit).  Over we went.  The arrangement pinned my left foot under the bike while I stretched out on my side in the mud (note that the exhaust is on the OTHER side of the bike. . .and I just barely pulled free (with my shoe!!) before rescue arrived.  Two ladies (with a little help from their husbands) took charge, stood me up, got the bike up (slipping and sliding, but there were five of us). . .and then she (clearly the boss lady)  hunted around to find a big enough rock to beat my footpeg back out of the transmission.  She took two licks to show me how to do it and then handed me the rock to finish the job.  We were a mess, the bike and I, though relatively speaking the rescuers were still pretty clean.

Surprisingly, we got through the rest of it right way up eventually and stopped at the first bike wash  we came to.  The little horse got a quick rinse and so did I, my pants, my shirt, my pack, my dispatch bag, my shoes, my socks (everyone giggled) and I bought a Red Cow (the Vietnamese literal translation of the Red Bull trade mark) to drink, and sat and answered questions. They wouldn't charge me for the rinse job (it must have been entertaining and enlightening enough to offset the costs).  The bike sat there and licked her footpeg and whimpered a little, but didn't argue when I said it was time to go.  I guess you have to say that any crash that can be put right with a garden hose and a nice sized rock isn't all that bad.

Now, all this time I'd intended to take Highway 4B and 4A out to Hwy 3 and follow it south just far enough to find Hwy 34 which would carry me across the mountains (by a very round about route) directly to Ha Giang.  However the very interesting smallness of the line that marked the middle third of it had begun to weigh on my mind.  I'd eaten enough clay for one day. . .so when we came to the turnoff and found the entire mouth of Hwy 34 was blocked by new construction work. . .I didn't even try.  The only other route lies a long ways south down Hwy 3 back toward Hanoi, then across some nice level farming country west on Hwy 37, and back North just as far and 100 km more on Hwy 2 to get to Ha Giang.  So that's what we did.  Wimped out.  Oh well.

Not to gripe though, the northern portion of both Hwy 3 and 2 (in that order) is plain lovely.  The highways run in river bottom land with steep mountains on both sides and the river (whichever) running fast and frothy brown over the rocks and shallows close at hand sometimes.  There were bamboo rafts (with small houses aft??) and long skinny steel river scows with long tail motors.  I saw a motorbike using both styles of crossing at one time or another.  I was not at all tempted to try the bamboo raft, though the bike and I have done fine with Lao canoes in the past.  The raft just looked dubious from where we were.  Besides we didn't need to get across THIS river.  Makes a difference. . .

And after the Hotel From Hell in Na Som, we hit pure gold the next night in a little place called Cho Moi.  Everything was right.  Great room, sweet people with a sweet 11 month old kid to tickle and pull my beard (I tickled her foot, she pulled my beard), a fine dinner in a rice-plate place (we all know bitter melon is inedible, but if you core it out and stuff it with pork sausage and a little onion top. . .surprise!).  Okay, so the stairs were narrow and steep and there WAS  a 90 degree turn in a spiral and that's pretty close to how I broke my leg in 2010, but the lighting was fine and it wasn't a problem.  I really am a little stronger now.  And I watch stairs like a hawk.

One more thing before the photos. . .imagine you're riding through a busy little town somewhere and you spot a motorbike parked on its side stand IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OPPOSITE LANE.  This is an odd place to park.  Now imagine there's a 3-year-old little girl sitting on the in-front-of-mom seat in the step-through of the bike.  Now notice that the mom is not behind her.  Look around.  There's mom!!  She's trotting back, and what's that she has??  A KID SHOE??  Yes by golly, a kid shoe.  Wow.  Now, imagine she gets back to the bike and carefully puts the shoe back on the kid. . .why not. . .and then gives her a quick kiss and a pat on the head (kids have all the luck) and then gets on and rides away.  That's just a little odd.  The miracle was that the big truck DIDN'T EVEN BLOW HIS HORN WHILE HE WAITED.  Wow.

Coal Country, black dust. . .

Coal Country, black mud.  Monstrous new project by Hyundai, looks like it will be a coal burning power plant.  Seven pile drivers, five tower cranes, too many crawlers and squirt booms to count.  My goodness.  And black mud.

And then Presto, past Cua Ong and into the hills and soon it's all a black dusty muddy memory.  The fun seriously begins!

Who'd want to ride on a road like that?  Hwy 18 between Cua Ong and Tien Yen

Harvest time on Hwy 4B--all along the route the rice is being cut (mostly by hand in these small fields), threshed (often by hand, but sometimes with small diesel powered portable threshers). . .and the grain spread out on tarps to dry, often right in the road.

The Kitchen Range in a first class Noodle Shop

Food Prep Counter in the truly fine Noodle Shop (most of the dishes are in the dishwasher right now).

The Chef supervising the dishwashing operation--the Noodle Shop (Little Horse in the background, she didn't get any)

A big Hyundai freighter on the main street of Na Som--both front axles steer.

Na Som is really a sweet place, you just might not want to spend the night in the hotel. . .

Somewhere along Hwy 4B, or was it 4A. . .h'mm.

I haven't gotten tired of the limestone cliffs yet.  Glad I don't have to hunt squirrels around here though. . .some of the trails must be pretty steep.

A quiet side stream, Ha Giang province (about 50 km from Ha Giang City)

Oops, I almost ran off to bed and forgot the best part of the Hotel From Hell. . .I went to bed just after 9:00.  About 10:00 a violent gale blew up (howling gale?) anyway, a very big wind, without any rain came roaring through town.  I snuggled a little deeper in the quilt and rolled back over.  Sleep found me.  So did the stranger at the door. . .I suppose I answered on the second round of knocking. . .fumbled around, checked I was properly dressed (shorts, watch, dogtags. . .) and opened the door.  The front desk lady was hopping mad about something and proceeded to tell me about it.  I understood exactly nothing of course, my hotel vocabulary doesn't go much past "do you have a room tonight?" so ". . .you've left your goldurned bathroom window open and it's blowing around and going to smash all the glass out any second so go pull it shut and lock it right now (I'm sure she said "goldurned", not anything harsher).  I answered (not at my best under the circumstances)". . .duh?"  After further consideration I finally managed a coherent "I don't understand. . ." and with an appropriate large gesture offered to let her in to do whatever she wanted with whichever.  She looked hard at my shorts and then sprinted for the bathroom.  I followed gaping like an idiot. . .oh well.  She did the necessary, scowled once and stomped out.  But the wind really did blow.  Good night.

On the road--Northbound

Friday, 9th November 2012, Written from Cam Pha, on the shores of Halong Bay and the edge of coal country.

At home in my hotel in Hanoi, faithful laptop barely squeezing out two bars of wifi.  What you can't see is the wardrobe to the left and the very narrow bathroom.  That hallway is open to the sky, though you have to lean way back to see it, four stories above.  Yes, it rains in the hall. . .

 Last night I saw my Hanoi hosts out the door.  That's a fun change, they've been seeing me off to the airport for years, but this time they are headed to France to marry off their youngest daughter (note:  if you send your pretty daughters off to Finland to graduate school don't be surprised if they end up married to Frenchmen). . .so I helped carry a ton of luggage (they're going to PAY for that at check in, but it is a wedding party after all).  It's not as though there was no family left in the hotel though, what with the two physicians (the couple that held me upright coming down the stairs with a really bad leg) and their daughter and her brand new daughter and both dentists and Grandma. . .there's still lots of family on hand, but really, with all my chores easily  done in those first two days in Hanoi, there was nothing to hold me and a long road ahead of me.  So this morning I packed for the road and left. I've settled on a run up through the northeast and then westward across the northern margin of the country, just below the Chinese border.  The short term goal is a region (and a town) called Ha Giang (you say it "ha ZANG").  Although the whole northern arc of the country is mountainous, and Ha Giang does not have the highest mountain (that's near Sapa, where we may not get this year), but if Ha Giang is not the highest ground it's probably the steepest cultivated ground I'll have seen, and supposed to be the most scenic.  The flip side of scenic is that the travel posters show switchbacks that promise a very long slow grind up the mountainsides and brake burning descents.  We'll see.  I hope.

But I'm skipping ahead, that's still to come.  Today was a really familiar run through essentially urban or going-to-be urban someday sort of country.  Basically it is simply close to Hanoi and part of the Industrial area that stretches widely between Hanoi and Haiphong, so even though it's almost all really farmland and some pretty country here and there, the fact is it's really almost all dead flat (Red River Delta, Duh) and all along the highways are scattered large warehouses and factories.

I'm being unfair, this is one of only two coal burning power plants along today's route, there was a lot more rice field and countryside, but this does give you a hint of the flavor of these Red River Delta towns.  Some though are really quite pretty, with flowering gardens at the entrance of the towns.  

So. . .it's not really very pretty very often UNTIL you come to the first of the limestone mountains that rise up out of the fields on the edge of Halong Bay.  That's an amazing change, from really flat, to straight up and down. The visibility today, eastbound on Highway 18 was really quite good under the broken overcast and the ranks of the mountain-islands rose over the flat sea in a series of monochrome grays, darker up close and fading into the far distance, as though each was cut from its own sheet of cardboard and pasted up against the sky. . .a perfect Chinese mountain painting, lacking only gnarly pine trees and the occasional dragon.

In lieu of dragons you DO have Sea Eagles, enormous birds, nearly all black, with a very distinctive profile, much different from our eagles at home, these birds have swept back pointed wing tips and long forked tails.  They stoop down to the water though much as an osprey does, or a bald eagle, dropping with folded wings to just above the sea, then flaring out and reaching with dragon's claws.  I only saw them miss today, the fishing was not good while I was passing by.

I did not turn aside into the new city of Bai Chai on the southern side of the (incredibly beautiful new) cable stay bridge, but slipped off the  highway and into the busy (and craggy) downtown of Hon Gai, the old half of Halong City.  I hadn't been sure of my arrival time (and in fact, it was nearly two in the afternoon) so I hadn't called ahead to invite anybody to lunch.  I owe a substantial debt in Hon Gai, though I paid for the gasoline last trip for a manic speedboat ride across miles of bay to photograph a fleet of model boats. . .page back through the last trip and you'll soon find that day. . .Mr Dung and Ms. Cuc (his excellent assistant and translator) went to a lot of effort to see to it that it all happened just as I needed it to.  I owe them at least a good lunch (and I promise not to look at the prices).  But not today, Mr. Dung is in Haiphong all day and into the evening and Ms. Cuc is snowed under.  Tomorrow she's taking 20 tourists off to see the world and he's going back to Haiphong on other business. So next time I'll call the day before (and try to be on time eh?).  Oh, it's interesting to note that Mr. Dung was in Haiphong primarily to visit the family of one of his staff, to deliver a collection of money taken up around the office and through the fleet, to help the family through a rough patch.  Their new child has a serious problem and their old grandmother is ill.

And so, on to Cam Pha this afternoon.  I've been coming here, to the same awful scrap of post-development someday (no doubt) superfund site to check on a gang of boatbuilders who produce some quite nicely shaped small fishing vessels under really awful conditions.  When I first stumbled on the site in 2005 the old man who was then the master builder was producing a very traditional style hull in two sizes, entirely by eye, one after another one or two at a time. I drank a lot of tea in his shack for a few years and documented his work pretty well.  He's gone now, and the men who were working for him have carried on and expanded the business so that now there are really four different small operations, each building one, two or even three boats at a time.  What's really fascinating (er, if you're really interested in that sort of thing) is that they've been continuously modifying the old man's design and producing (I really think) a better adaptation of the old sailing type hull for its modern day service as a small motor-fishing vessel.  I'll write a full article on that theme for www.BoatsAndRice.com someday soon.  Stay tuned.

One boat nearly finished and another only two days along.  Actually, "nearly finished" still has to be caulked and painted, which is a great deal of work, and she still needs her machinery, but the woodwork is coming to an end.

One fun thing:  there's a tiny and impromptu coffee and soda shop on the edge of the building site where I've ;photographed a really cute kid.  I'd delivered photos after several different visits. . .so was warmly greeted by the lady of the house.  Page back through the last couple of trips and I think you'll see her as the scrawny mom in a lot of clothes with a really cute and lively 3-year old. . .)  Anyway, she pinpointed in seconds how long it had been since I was there by reference to her baby girl, now 11 months.  She was 2 months when last I was here.  Mothers are like that.  The boy, now 4, was at school "gone to study".  In America poor people don't send their kids to school at 4 do they?  These folks live in a small scrapwood and tin shack with a bed and the refrigerator for their sodas and beer (the coffee shop is under the tarp outside), no door or window, and borrowed electricity. . .but their healthy looking 4 year old is in preschool.  The republicrats need to think about that a little.  

They certainly grow fast!

Overnight break--now 6:30 on November 10th.  It's much warmer now than the last time I was in these parts and yesterday afternoon there was only a very little rain (enough to get the bike and my shoes thoroughly muddy, but not really wet).  The sky is not terribly dark right now, but the drizzle is heavy enough to have the road wet and most riders have on their ponchos. Oh Sigh.  The last time I tried this northeastern route it was very cool and very very wet at times.  For mountain scenery I'd really have preferred puffy white clouds and blue sky. . .h'mm.  For riding through the coal country (the next 30 or 40 miles the roads will be black and the black will stick on everything) I'm not sure if I prefer the dust or the mud.  I guess. . .we'll probably settle for black mud today.  I'll post a photo or two with this and then get some breakfast. There may be a scarcity of wifi over the next few days, so I'll post this while I can.

Safe on the Ground in Hanoi. . .again

When the time comes that leaving home behind and flying a third of the way around the world is purely routine, then perhaps I'll worry.  But the magic of the modern air travel system on this Seattle-Seoul-Hanoi route is truly amazing.  What does it take to have four hundred odd people walk down a gangway, sit down together in easy chairs, eat a very good dinner together, watch videos in, er. . .several languages (okay, Korean, Chinese with Korean subtitles, Japanese with Korean subtitles, French with Korean subtitles, Hindi, with Korean Subtitles, and Hollywood in all of the above as well as Tagalog (soundtracks dubbed).  Then  after the movies, the lights go out and it's time for a nap. . .which lasts until it's time for breakfast (or is that dinner #2??).  Whereupon, with the dishes cleared away and never a bump or a grumble we landed in Seoul.  Very very close to routine, but still exciting as can be.  From Seoul to Hanoi this year was different than hitherto however.  Instead of a much smaller airplane, the flight was another wide body jet, clear full (they're almost always full, but up to now were never so big).  Nowadays the flight goes directly over mainland China, which did not use to be the case. . .and is something like 25 minutes shorter, not a small gain.  And Hanoi airport is busy, much busier at least.  Instead of 3 or 4 planes on the ground, there were at least 14 I could count when we got there at almost midnight.  The world it is a changing!

The ride into the city, nearly 35 kilometers to my hotel, was much as before though.  Hanoi pretty well rolls up the streets before ten at night, and there's very little going on.  Here and there a pool of light holds people on some sort of night shift eating noodles or looking for customers or offloading flowers or vegetables from the long haul trucks, but mostly the streets are dim and there are only a few taxis out and about among a tiny fraction of the motorbikes that will take over in the morning.  I think if this were your only impression of Viet Nam you would probably never come back.  Drab, dark, certainly not very pretty.  Oddly enough, it feels very welcoming to me after all these years.  It's just Hanoi. . .and she doesn't stay up late.

The Physics Professor (whose 90 year old Mom owns the hotel) came to the locked grille across the front of the house after a short wait (you have to know exactly where to reach through the sheet metal behind the grille's bars to push the bell that wakes the household).  My cab tried really hard to deliver me to the next-door "real hotel", whose bellhop smartly picked up my duffel and was amazed I wasn't following him.  We sorted it all out in a minute or two, and I was soon unpacked and into bed.  "My" room (the only guestroom on the ground floor) had been cleared out for me.  I'll never know how many people they have to shift around to put me in Room 103, but since I broke my leg on the stairs to start off 2010, I haven't been allowed to set foot on a stairwell.  That's a tough way to get special treatment I admit, but I really like Room 103.  Much better than 4 flights of steep stairs!

I always have a few chores to do when I get to town before I can hit the road, but this year my prior preparations truly are paying off.  The big deal is the motorbike, the same one I've ridden since 2010.  Having sat (mostly anyway, she was obviously out on chores of some sort for almost 1000 km while I was gone) in storage, she has new tires, new tubes, new chain and sparkplug, she's been washed and brushed and tuned up and runs like a dream.  My saddle bags are hung on her, the tool kit, rain gear and boots are all there. . .and I've had a fine afternoon visiting with the mechanics and friends who make that all happen.  It used to take a week pounding the pavements of Hanoi, or more, just to get to this point.  H'mm.  This is much better!

Still, there were a few chores to do and some fun shopping to get out of the way, so I walked a good millimeter off the soles of my shoes I think (sweated through my clothes and wore my jet-lag confused body down to the point of sleeping last night).  So there's a new full-face helmet on top of the wardrobe today, a large improvement over what I've worn the past two trips, and I managed to add to my collection of early wedding photos and traffic congestion. . .There must have been seven wedding parties scattered around Hoan Kiem Lake taking their photos a month before the actual wedding. . .the brides mostly in huge white dresses and the men in black tuxedos and friends packing snacks, drinks and props to make the photo shoot civilized.  Interestingly, Red is the traditional color for weddings and celebrations in general, while white is the color for funerals.  The western standard is pretty well winning that debate though, with the white wedding dress clearly the favorite for photos at least.  A PROPER wedding will no doubt also involve changing into the traditional style dress, including the odd wedding hat. . .but the white dress gets pride of place I think.  On the far side of the lake as I was walking South to find a particularly good lunch spot (I have a favorite in every town. . .is this the beginning of routine??) I spotted a unique compromise. . .a thoroughly Western style white dress that was BRIGHT RED.  You are not really ready for that I suspect.  He was wearing a white tuxedo, if that counts. . .

Okay, so my favorite couple for the day broke the rules, she's wearing a more or less traditional Ao Dai (say it  "Ow -Yigh", not a Western wedding dress at all. . .but it's white, not RED and. . .oh never mind, Hanoi is modern I guess.  

Just a couple of quick glimpses of Hanoi rush hour a block or two from home.  Nothing is moving.  Rush?  What Rush??

When I finally get moving  I'll head Northeast to start if nothing bends or breaks, work my way around to the Northwest of the country, sort of following the Chinese and then the Lao borders through the mountains after a short leg along the Northern coast.  That should bring me back through Hanoi in a week or nine days and then it'll be time for the long haul southward.  Unless of course they let me into Laos this trip.  I'll have to ask eh??