Run Across Country, headed for Phu Quoc Island

Written from Ha Tien, Kien Giang province, November 25, 2013.  Weather was pleasant at daylight, clear and not too hot, very hot at mid day and cool again in mid afternoon (say 3:30 or 4:00) when the daily thunderstorm passes through.  Find a place to write or something. . .just don't try to ride until it's over (usually 4:15 to 4:45 or thereabouts)

The past three days amount to a complete passage across the delta, starting north a ways at Phan Thiet, through Saigon, into the real delta country at My Tho, then south and west across the delta to Rach Gia and finally, today, on into Ha Tien.  From here, after three years of saying I was going to, I will finally take the boat over to Phu Quoc Island.  But that's tomorrow, This is about just getting close!  That first leg, from Phan Thiet, through Saigon and on toward My Tho really isn't much of a pleasure.  There's a ways at the start of the day that's pretty easy going, but pretty shortly you start to get into the far outer outskirts of Ho Chi Minh, and it only gets worse after that.  I was determined this trip to avoid going right through the middle of the city.  I always get lost there and that gets tedious.  There is a bypass road.  It IS a terrible traffic mess, but at least you keep going where you need to, not around in circles.  I don't know which fork in the road was the wrong one, but I entered the city, as often before, across the Saigon bridge.  Sigh.  Now I have to say that Saigon Traffic has a bad rap.  It's busy certainly, but nothing outrageous.  The main arterials are mostly divided with impregnable side lanes for motorbikes, and the cars are happier with a lane or two of their own. More important, the street signage is 100% perfect.  Actually, it's better than that.  Not only are all the corners signposted, but essentially every building has its full street address clearly shown either on concrete or on the awning.  Phone numbers too if you want them.  So there's a lot good to be said.  This time, knowing I had a ways to go before starting the wander through the maze, I simply carried on in the protected bike lane for quite a ways and then spotted a good place to pull over to the curb and plot my course.  I have a tourist map, a good thing to have under the circumstances.  I think it shows every street and most of the named alleys in the city.  It indicates statues, radio transmitter towers, roundabouts. . .a lot.  So I write out a list (traffic buzzing by, the occasional helpful local looking over my shoulder), a list, as I was saying,  street by street, turn by turn, noting roundabouts, bridges (named!!!) and anything that'll make it easier ("Lake & Park on Left at turn" for example).  Then put away the map, put the list in my shirt pocket and we're off.  It worked.  I no longer "ALWAYS" get lost in Saigon.  One safe crossing does not a native guide make, but I'm pretty proud of it.

Then you emerge from the well ordered life of the city onto the highway again.  It's the most miserable stretch of road in the country. . .perfectly nice pavement and so forth, but an unbroken chain of heavy transport going both directions hordes of motorbikes and city buses.  Of all the heavy traffic, they're the only thing allowed in our motorbike lane.  They want to run in the highspeed part of the lane, over on the left, but they want to let their people out or pick them up at the curb.  They do this a lot.  If you're beside one as it heads for the curb you won't see its turn signal.  Fortunately, the turn signals are wired to a horn that sounds sort of like "WHEE Up. . ." frequently.  Hear it and move, that bugger is coming over!

It does get better, very very slowly, and by the time you're within 30 km of My Tho it's pretty livable again.  The countryside is country more or less. . .still lots of activity, but not the wall to wall commercial and industrial mass that you start with.  The worst of the traffic pulls off and goes somewhere else, and you're left with  just a busy ride in a semi-urban setting.  Ten km from My Tho, in the evening rush hour already it's suddenly just fine.  Wandering through the city, finding the river, then the long park and the sharp turn at the side channel of the river that runs by the market, down a few blocks, past the bridge, into the market, left turn and another block and pull up into the hotel lobby. They remembered me from one night last year.

There was time for a walk along the river and a glass of mineral water with lemon juice and a whole pot of tea (really nice tea) while I sprawled in a deck chair with my feet on the bank and the river freighters going by.    I ate Bun Rieu Cua with Mam. . .a delta specialty (yet another noodles and meat and veggies and herbs and seasonings sort of thing--the mam is pungent but good) I found it at the foot of the street and sat at a little red table on a little red chair on the sidewalk at the edge of the market in the dark.    It was a very good day and a lot of kilometers to have run, something over 200, including Saigon. . .H'mm.

It's interesting to reflect though that when I came down with dysentery in 2005 it was in Ben Tre, yet  another 10 kilometers farther than My Tho.  I was terribly sick for 3 nights and 2 days and when I finally could ride again, weak as I was, I rode in one stage from Ben Tre to Mui Ne, another 18 km more on the far end of the trip, so about 38 km longer ride. I was terribly weak and all I remember of the trip was being nauseated by every whiff of smoke from burning weeds or trash or. . .so help me. . .from the terrible stink of drying fish along the road.  (Normally I don't mind that aroma at all. . .).  When I got to Mui Ne I spent 3 days more, either dozing in my room or swinging in a hammock under a palm tree, only moving when the sun moved my shade. Then I moved on.  I suppose I was 8 years younger then!

The feeling of the Delta is unique in my life.  The air is full of the smells of growing things (some of  them pretty strong!).  Water is everywhere, flooding the rice fields, filling little channels along the roadway, running hard down some canals that carry a constant stream of traffic. . .and now and then you come to the River itself.  It's enormous here, chocolate brown and moving quickly to the sea.  The markets are filled beyond imagination with a superabundance of good things to eat. . .fresh fish from sea and live ones from the river, meat of all sorts, live ducks and chickens, an absolutely unbelievable display of vegetables and fruits, rows and streets filled with it all. . .and then there are the dried and preserved things.  Unbelievable abundance.  The air is warm and the sun is hot, people wear loose clothes in beautiful colors, street stalls are everywhere selling wonderful flavors for very little. . .but the place is flat.  I mean, really flat.  As in maybe a few feet above the river. . .everywhere.  You get to go up 15 or even 20 feet to go over some bridges, and the new suspension and cable stay bridges over major branches of the river take you way up in the sky where you can see for miles over the very very flat land.  I like hills.  Rocks.  Steep places and switchbacks on my roads.   So I'm ambiguous about the delta.

When I was a young man I had very little to do with the delta, just an occasional trip with my interpreter-bodyguard to visit his family in Ben Tre, but I remember it quite differently than it seems now, with frequent long views across endless rice paddy.  Eight years ago when I first began wandering through this country I followed much of this same route.  Then it was built up all along the banks of the straight canals (look at the map and think of all the dredging that took!!) but you could still see quite a lot of the water as you rode along.  Viet Nam has 90 million people now, and they're having really cute kids at every reasonable opportunity, so it's getting a bit more populated somehow.  You can ride for miles along QL80, one of the major 2 lane roads through the countryside, and not see the canal that runs along it more than a glimpse now and then.  It's astounding, but I think it may be as much as 40 or 50 kilometers of buildings, houses and shops and workshops, built brick to brick except at intersections and bridges.

All that comes to an end about 20 km outside of Ha Tien.  You come into a town much like a hundred little towns you've been through in the past two days, turn a corner, and there's a river full of fishing boats, ocean going fishing boats, and an open bay beyond and just at the river's mouth. . .a great hunk of rock.  After riding two days through untold acres of flat mud, the sight of a proud rock standing beside the sea is enough to make your heart beat. . .and the boats.  Seagulls and salt water and maybe a sea eagle.  From that point on you're never far from the sea and its smell and the hills begin to come out to meet you.  Ha Tien is at the end of the delta. . .or just a mile or two past it.

Random things seen on the road the past few days:

At a stoplight:  A young husband settling his young wife on their motorbike.  She's sitting on the back seat of the parked bike. He's just finished tying a pretty green flowery blanket around her neck, draped over her front and into her lap.  Her arms and the tiny baby they're holding are hidden under it.  She's sitting bolt upright.  He put  her helmet on her head, reached under her chin to find the strap and clicked it.  The light turned green and I left.

Charlie Chaplin on TV in the sanctuary of a Khmer Buddhist temple.  The head monk of the establishment was watching spellbound.  It was actually great. . .I've seen very little of Chaplin, and never before in a Buddhist temple.

A fast river boat with two truck batteries, a lady passenger and a skipper going quite briskly down the river playing a Bach organ piece on a horrible loudspeaker loudly enough to break glass or synchronize heart beats. . .and so distorted it might have been anything (I'm betting on the Bach, just because it's so unlikely).

A drunk young man being frog marched off the road where he had either been trying to flag down a bus or maybe attack it. . .followed by a weeping young woman.  (No, everything is not perfect here, or always fun, and alcohol is a problem after noon for a lot of men).

Very small corner of the My Tho market. . .every day. . .so much food!

The size comparison tickled me. . .but the young man was so casual about that canoe,  and sitting so high up in it.  My goodness!  Some, just a bit wider, with a square stern, have MOTORS.  M'gosh.

At long last. . .I've been wanting a photo of one of these fish transports running light for years!  Saw him coming, passed him, ran until I found a bridge, got on it, GOT HIM!.  They flood down until the tires are wet, the whole midsection is basically a fish tank.  The family lives on a slotted floor above the fish.  Their market--load at fish farms, offload at markets like the one at My Tho. . .sometimes takes a few days, but the fish are happy while they wait.

6.5 meter Mekong canoes. . .fast.  Very fast, with a long tail outboard motor.  Tippy. . .very very tippy. . 

Would you buy a new canoe from these people?

Now this is a really nice place to sit, write, eat a baguette (stuffed with eggs, pate, margarine, cucumber, pickled daikon and carrot, cilantro, red chili. . .) and drink super sweet milky coffee.  Rach Gia, near the ferry terminal.

The prettiest little power scow you're likely to see this week. . .with the muddiest tractor.  There are a great many of these little work horses, but few this freshly painted and pretty

They thought it was hilarious, me hurrying to take a picture of a boat. . .A BOAT FOR GOODNESS SAKE. . .like what planet is this guy from??

Massive funeral, banners, brass band, people strewing paper money, formal mourners, and a team of men with shoulder straps actually carrying the huge and ornate  coffin (mother of pearl dragons near life size!) 

A very small, very new Khmer Buddhist temple

The sanctuary. . .Charlie Chaplin movie on the TV (that's the bad guy).

A Rock by golly!  and Sea Boats. . .enough of this river stuff!

She must have found a shrimp shop out there. . .loaded so far down she was wallowing at every touch of the rudder as she came up the river

Putting the boat away at the end of the day. . .thunderstorm moving out over the sea.  Mui Nai beach, near Ha Tien.

Traveling quickly for a bit. . .but a great day around Mui Ne

Written from My Tho (south of Ho Chi Minh City about 80 km), 23 November 2013, weather generally o'cast with breaks.  No rain where I was. . .and not too hot, pretty good traveling weather.  But that was today, and I wanted to talk about Phan Thiet and Mui Ne just a bit, so back to yesterday:

Yesterday was a full day on the road running back from Phan Thiet to Mui Ne and then on beyond on the not so new now coast road as far as the amazing fresh water lake in the sand dunes. . .and back again, so something over 100 km  to arrive at the same hotel room, but it was a pleasant place.  I was determined to find any active new construction (boats, not hotels) and I found hotels being built, not boats.  Sigh.  But the weather was truly lovely, puffy white clouds in a blue sky (okay, some of those clouds had lightning in them, but they didn't rain on us).   It made for pretty seascapes and bright colors on fishing boats.

Phan Thiet is a harbor town with a large and interesting fishing fleet and at least 3 boat yards that I've documented. . .and not a scrap of new construction in any of them, just lots of maintenance (a good thing by and large. . .maintenance).  It's the only big town or small city I can think of that Lonely Planet says to give a miss. . .kind of sad, the town is perfectly nice, though they have an odd idea about breakfast eggs.  I ask for a "banh my op la" which almost anywhere in Viet Nam will get you a fried (or scrambled) egg in a split baguette, with cucumber, pate, margarine, soy sauce, cilantro, grated daikon and/or carrot. . .you get the idea, a rich and varied breakfast treat. . .for about a dollar, or less.  In Phan Thiet the same request gets you two eggs frizzled on the bottom and raw on the top still in their little tin frying pan. . .and two baguettes to eat with them.  Oh. . .also a lot of salt.  I worked on that a little, and maybe they'll get the idea now.  Goodness.

But on to Mui ne. . .Mui Ne lies on a rocky peninsula sticking out from a long coastline of sand. It's a stunning location with a superb bay lying at the foot of the town.  The overlook with the paved stairs down to the beach (it's a long hike for an old guy) is probably the most famous "beach scene" in Viet Nam, a lovely bay, charming village and probably 300 fishing boats anchored at any given moment, all sorted by size and type ("don't you anchor that dragger here, this is a squid fisherman's block. . ".or some such).  Tourists line up 20 deep to photograph it.  You need to be there early on a slightly hazy morning to get the best photo though, not mid afternoon.  

It's almost 23 km from Phan Thiet to Mui Ne and essentially every inch of the way is white sand beach, covered in hotelsm, guest houses, restaurants and beauty parlors (with or without massages).  Some of the hotels and restaurants are very very up scale.  I saw one place with two golf courses bragging that they have rooms starting at $2,500,000 VND. . .about $125.  Starting!  And they were bragging!!  All the way down to places I've stayed for less than $10.  Quite a range.  Russian is the third language all along Mui Ne beach. . .Vietnamese first I think, then English. . .and close behind (based on signage anyway) Russian.  I think the letter "pi" from Greek is also the letter for "P" in Cyrillic. . .They way they spell pharmacy is suspicious. . .A"pi"teka. . ."Apothecary" pretty much. .

Mui Ne itself is still very much a Vietnamese town.  No tourist spots at all, only one guest house I've noticed (and it's NOT a tourist place), a really great bike mechanic's shop but the little horse simply isn't needing much since she got her new battery. . .I let them oil and adjust her chain. . .all that running the day before in gritty rain let it wear a bit, and she wanted to say hi to him anyway.  And there's lots of good street food and coffee, just nothing set up for tourists at all.  It shows real dedication I think.

They call the terrain "sand dunes", which I suppose is strictly correct. . .they were probably placed by wind action after the sea ground up whatever to make so much sand, but now the "dunes" are a bit more like "hills", with quite a lot of cactus and scrub brush to anchor the sand most places, and very little in the way of migrating dunes, certainly nothing like the Sahara.  It's a dramatic and pretty scenery though, with the bright red and very white sands (the dunes are either red or white. . .don't ask, I've no idea yet).

But I didn't start this to write about scenery. . .I have a new boat to show off.  You've perhaps heard me complaining that people are building fiberglass tubs to replace the round, woven bamboo boats on the coast and at Mui Ne last year I saw the first DIESEL POWERED ROUND FIBERGLASS TUBS.  I was offended.  I admit they work amazingly well, they just look awful and they'll last a long time and desecrate the beaches and be abominations. . .but otherwise they're fine I guess.  Obviously they suit a lot of the fishermen.  Well.  This year we have a new variation on that theme and. . .this is painful to admit. . .I like them.  These are essentially the same sort of thing, a fiberglass tub, BUT it's different.  Sort of.  I mean, it's a boat, not just a tub.  It has a bow and a stern and sometimes a proper skeg for its stern tube and a nice (usually but not always) traditional wooden rudder.  Yes, I admit it's a little short. . .9'6" to be precise. . .and a little broad in the beam. . .7'3" and it's pretty deep for its length (as is the 8' diameter typical plastic round tub), 41" deep forward, 31" amidships, 39" aft. . .that's really a lovely sort of sheer line. . .well, compared to a flat round tub.  Anyway, I think they're cute.  I usually prefer Pretty, but in the absence of pretty. . .cute will do.

So here are a few photos at random from around Mui Ne and Phan Thiet.

This is the only boatyard I've found in Viet Nam that I CANNOT get into.  There is absolutely no obvious land access.  I suppose somebody's back door must open onto the work area, but there's no sign on the front door, and there's no opening in the solid wall of houses and gates for 500 meters.  Probably nothing I wanted to see anyway and the grapes are no doubt sour too.

Looking back across the bay toward the tourist side.  This is a very shallow, shelving edge of the bay out by the point, in constant use for cleaning bottoms and doing quick work on propellers and rudders.  Some day it will be a superfund site, with tons of TBT and Lead and Copper.  For now, thank goodness, it's just a good place for a fisherman to take care of his boat.  Red sand dune in the far distance.

This isn't top of the line by any means, only 2 swimming pools and no golf course.  But it's kind of photogenic.  Sort of.

A good look at a big sand dune down the coast a ways.  Cactus, scrub brush, and a gorgeous beach for miles.  This is along the "new" coast road beyond Mui Ne to the North, where they've only had six years or so to build hotels, so it's still fairly wild.  The first time I rode this stretch it wasn't open to the public yet.  I picked up the man who had been painting the centerline stripe, complete with his bucket and brush and hauled him back to the construction camp.  I had white paint on my black saddle for weeks after that.  

It isn't so much that life in paradise is awful, she was just really peeved at her older brother and her mom.

There she is, the Better Tub-Boat (or is it Boat-tub).  Not all of them have proper eyes though, this one is well within tolerances to be called a TRADITIONAL Tub.  er.  boat.  

So here's a tiny part of the fleet of tubs. . .nice ones I insist. . .good traditional running gear (well, the rudder hanging is a bit odd) and great traditional paint (note the entirely correct traditional art work on the anchor fairlead forward (uh, that's to the left, the end without a propeller)

A nice busy boat yard (you can drive right to this one, it's just inside the breakwater (on the north bank, opposite the fish market wharf) at Phan Thiet.  There are hundreds of boats in the harbor, so this place is always busy, but nothing new building.  Actually the boat on the left is getting a new cabin and already has most of a new stern. . .that almost counts as new work!

And these are Linh and Mai (on the left).  Two of the sweetest little beggars I've ever met.  Someone has taught them how to ask for money ten different ways, and to keep at it until your tourist drops.  I'm a tough nut, but this one was hard.

Odd Bits from Nha Trang

Written from Phan Thiet, November 22, 2013.  Early morning sun from a mostly clear sky.  But that's today, yesterday on the other hand was pouring rain for 230 kilometers, from Nha Trang here.  Warm enough not to get dangerously chilled, but danged uncomfortable anyway.  That's been the story the past week, a lot of rain, mixed mostly with dark overcast.  Sigh.

Nha Trang continues to evolve and get busier.  Traffic on the main streets is now as dense as in most of Hanoi, and a much larger portion of it is un-trained tourists, which makes for occasional moments of terror as you realize that the fellow approaching at twice anybody else's speed is a gentleman from Russia and clearly doesn't know the ordinary rules of road behavior here.  Your first impression on seeing traffic here is that there are no rules and it's a total mayhem situation.  Not true at all really.  The rules are just a little different and they start from two rather interesting points.  First, everyone is entitled to use a public street, not just rich people with cars.  So if you need to move a few cattle from here to there and it's close enough for them to walk, they're going to walk.  Why would you rent a truck??  That extends of course right up through the range of mobility from Ox carts (oxen pull heavy loads. . .slowly, but they pull) or horse drawn carts (faster and more fun, but not as heavy) up to bicycles and motorbikes and so forth.  The other point that takes a while to pick up is that the rules of behavior are worked around the fact that the motorbike, not the car is the basic unit of transport.  Millions and millions (over 80 million registered in a country of 90 million men, women and children) of motorbikes.  They don't have any special right of way mind you, but the observable rules are based on their mobility and speeds.  Anyway, once you understand how it's supposed to work, it makes your life on the road a good deal nicer.

In any event,  Russian is probably the second language in Nha Trang.  Some businesses in the tourist zone don't even bother with French or English any more, just Russian in their windows.  Or, if the sign is in Vietnamese and English, it might be out of date.  A "Juice Bar" with a solid wall of Vodkas for example. . .well. . .it IS juice I guess, and it wasn't just vodka, there was a little whiskey and brandy down at the far end.  It's only fair of course, when the entire rest of the world turned their back on Viet Nam, and China tried to grab a bit of the North, the Russians were "helpful".  So it's cold in Moscow now and very nice here if you don't mind the rain.  The upside of all that is that I can recognize a few words in Cyrillic now. . .Taxi, for example. . .and Coffee, for sure. . .oh. . .and Vodka.

Wildlife--not something that often comes up in discussions of Viet Nam--it used to be abundant I believe, tigers, elephants, that sort of thing, deer and wild oxen and all manner of birds.  But I had an interesting contact with local wildlife on a run back along the coast road from Cam Ranh to Nha Trang.  The Archaeologist was riding 100 meters behind, about where she likes to be when we're on the road, and she saw it all. . .I, on the other hand, being right with myself, missed all but the climax.  I "drive" the road a good ways ahead, and having identified any likely problems, keep moving my attention on down the road.  So I didn't see the little bugger launch himself across the road ahead of me.  My vision picked him up at maybe ten feet ahead and ten feet off to my left and moving very fast to the right. . .way too close and too fast for me to do anything about it.  So I just braced for the impact and dropped the throttle. . .and he made it.  I might have gotten a little  of his tail hair, but no more than that.  So. . .he was almost as red as a fox in summer time and as big as a smallish dog, body and tail together might have gone to three feet.  He had a sharp little nose and a long bushy tail sticking straight out behind him.  The overall impression (if you've been on the big island of Hawaii) was "Mongoose!"  but. . .he was too big and too pretty.  Mongeese (?) are not all that good looking but this fellow, if he'd let me, would have been worth looking at for a while.  The Archaeologist was just waiting for the crash and thinking about bandages and so forth, and she was sure I must have touched him at least. . .but no.  We all got out of that one alive.  Oh.  No, no photos of him, whoever he was.

There are white egrets here in their hundreds. . .often earning their name "cattle egrets", hanging out with cows.  The question, how many egrets are needed for each cow?  It depends on whether the cow is walking around loose or if he/she is tied to a peg in the ground and dragging a rope.  Five will cover the work if the animal is walking free. . .one for each foot and one for the nose. . .that way no bug or frog gets away, the egrets are REALLY fast with the beak. If there's a rope. . .well, that just depends, how long is the rope??

If you've read the right part of the website (www.BoatsAndRice.com) you'll know that I have seen a lovely big boatyard upstream from the Cham Towers in Nha Trang. . .upstream of the old bridge.  You'll also know, if you read the fine print, that I'd never been able to wind my way through the maze back in those little streets to find the place.  This time, with the Archaeologist wanting to see every possible boat yard in case there was some remnant of an ancient technology to photograph, we persevered and got there.  It is now absolutely certain that all their timber comes by water.  Unless they have helicopter delivery.  The little streets are just barely wide enough to turn a bike around in and SO crooked.  Anyway, they're a delightful boatyard with a good crop of new construction going. . .but it's all the typical Modern Motor Fishing Vessel, so she turned up her nose at it all and we went looking elsewhere.  Some people are hard to please!

One of the elsewhere's turned out to be a tiny boatyard, most of it under one low roof, where the gentleman had just begun building a 6 meter long by 1.6 meter wide "canoe" shaped work boat. . .wooden sheer strake to define the shape, held in place with braces and turnbuckles. . .and rolled steel gauge metal (heavier than "sheet metal" but not yet "plate".   He said it would be finished tomorrow!  So we came back, actually for 4 days running.  He was not kidding, he had completed the steel shell by the next evening, but there was still a lot of work to do on it (boat building is like that. . .the hull is only maybe 1/3 of the work).  So we kept coming back and it was my last stop on the way out of town yesterday.  It was all finished except for the engine and rudder. . .and he said he'd finish that too in another two days.  Amazing.  Less than a week start to finish, and it'll be quite a workwise litle boat.  Built to carry sand I think. . .people dig it off the shoreline and bring it into town to sell to masons.

The corollary to "I've left Nha Trang" is that the Archaeologist has gone back to work at Hoi An, so from this point forward, it's just the Little Horse and me again.  But Nha Trang was a joint effort.  I've often said I wouldn't encourage anybody to come along with me, for fear of promising them a good time and ending up getting them squished by a pig truck or some other horrible fate on the road (dysentery anyone?).  I still agree with myself, but traveling with someone like the Archaeologist who is well able to fend for herself was quite pleasant.  I'd have her along again if it worked that way, even if she doesn't like papaya and lime.  How can you not like papaya and lime I wonder. . .very odd.

Okay, it didn't rain all day every day. . .and we saw a few things besides boat yards

She's a very unusual Quan Yen, longer hands, much slenderer (the more normal representation is noticeably chubby).  This is a hillside Chua along the highway, just North of Nha Trang 28 km or so.

Evening of day one. . .the Archaeologist interrogating the builder

I almost bought a boat like this one once. . .the fellow said "she has a little soft wood in the bow."  Yes.  I see, well, they can fix it.

A really little half-basket rowing boat--the blue topsides are wood, but the darker material below is basketry, perhaps a Vietnamese innovation not seen elsewhere. . .and very effective!

Just really typical Nha Trang small fishing vessels, essentially unchanged since sailing days. . .well, except for the motors and the paint and. . .no sails.

And this is the typical larger fishing vessel, though she's had a fabulous trip.  She's down so far forward with fish that her propeller is almost in the air aft.  Not in a sinking condition, but mighty well loaded.  We used to say of such  a load that ". . .they found the fish market out there!"  Indeed.

One Look and the Archaeologist was ready to leave. . .no old style boats here.  I stalled a bit.  Really nice big modern MFV's.  We found dozens of them under construction and hundreds of them in the harbors. . .this is the shape of Vietnamese fishing these days. The timber comes from Laos whenever we asked.  Viet Nam has largely been shorn of its large wood.

Evening-Day Two, only this little dab left to finish the "planking".  And. . .it's all riveted too.

And evening of day 3. . .gunnels on, thwarts added, all the steel finalized and sealed (well, almost, he finished before he quit for the night.  It looks like a mixture of sand, dung and varnish, but who knows??  He called it "Chay"

We provided supper time amusement while we tried to find out where a certain canoe came from. . .far away. . .at Song Cau.  We'd been to Song Cau.  Found a key there actually!

And here's the morning of day 4.  All finished but for the engine and rudder and they were to happen in the next day or two.  She'll sell for $12 million VND, or $600 USD more or less. . .about what I paid for the Little Horse when she was new.

They Took the Road Less Traveled. . .oh my.

Written from Nha Trang, 18 November 2013.  Weather generally overcast, occasional heavy rain shower, wind moderate here in town, but out on the highway (and the sea) it's blowing a stiff Northerly, gusting over 25 kn at times.
But that's today.  Look back a to Saturday, which turned out very well indeed, after a minor 21 km mis-step.  We (that still means "the Archaeologist, her bike, my bike and I") we, as I was saying intended to ride on  South to Song Cau from Quy Nhon, nominally about 100 km round trip, so a nice pleasant day, allowing for interesting side trips and visits with whomever we could corner.  It started reasonably enough, hiding from a torrential rain squall at a delightful floating restaurant at the end of QL1D, the coast road from Quy Nhon south, while the kids of the place ran errands (buy some coffee!) and waited tables while also keeping track of a soap opera on the TV.  A bit later, down a narrow little village street, to a tiny boat yard  with nothing we hadn't already seen before, but some friendly people and one cute kid, so it was a good visit.  I, given my superior knowledge and understanding explained to the Archaeologist that a village street such as we were on, having left the highway by way of a well concealed slanting entrance, would almost certainly quietly rejoin the highway at the end of the village on another well concealed slanting exit.  She, with her superior Vietnamese, asked our hosts if that were so and they assured her I was right, so, leaving behind the enormous puddle (small lake) we'd already safely crossed (we swam the horses) we bade them farewell and set out to find the highway.  It was really a lovely road, twelve feet wide, paved with real concrete (think "bump-bump. . .bump-bump. . .bump-bump. . .as you ride across the hand tooled expansion joints) real concrete, I was saying, through fields and farms. . .well. . .through flooded green rice paddies (gorgeous green velvet rice paddies to be fair), past quite nice small houses. . .and then out onto the dunes along the coast--tamarisk and sand, and now and then a glimpse of the sea beyond. . .simply a lovely ride with no traffic at all.  10.6 km later we came to a tiny village and the road stopped.  To prove it, there was a delivery truck smack in the middle of the last paved section, with his rear bumper neatly hung on the lip of the last concrete slab and his wheels spinning hopelessly above the sand below.  End of the road and then some. We ascertained that it was 10 km back to the highway and left them with their planks and hydraulic jack, hoping to liberate the truck.  The kids were loving it. . .a stuck truck and two weird foreigners, all in one day!!

So we took the right fork at the end of the village and regained the highway and wandered on toward Song Cau, feeling like we were due a good lunch and hoping to find the ultimate "small, traditional, double ended boat yard" in the process.  We did find the harbor and a boat yard full of stuff we already had boxes of photos of.  But the harbor was full of pretty boats bouncing in a lively chop, and it seemed reasonable to have that well earned lunch in sight of the fleet.  Regrettably, we found the only two eating establishments along the harbor road sold out and closed for the day.  Sigh.  By now we were feeling decidedly hungry so we returned to the highway (which is also the main street of town) and immediately found the wrong spot for lunch.  It took a bit for all the problems to develop, but in short, they didn't really have any food (beer, soda water, lemon juice. . .sure. . .food. . .well would you like some instant noodles?  Uh. . .h'mm.  But yes, go ahead with the noodles.  Then there were the drunks. . .it was, after all, on toward 2 in the afternoon, which is a time for visiting with friends and beer here and they had done so.  They turned out to all be sweet drunks except for two. . .and one of the sweet ones was good enough to actually try to control the problem children.  But the crowning master stroke was my missing motorbike key.  You know how it is, you ride up to an inappropriate lunch spot, take a deep breath, decide to eat there anyway, reach for the instrument cluster on the handle bars and your fingers neatly find, switch off and remove the key. . .if it's there.  It wasn't.  Good grief.  Well, at first gasp, it seemed like not too much of a problem, the bike was still running, but there was the small additional matter of unlocking the gas cap so I could replenish the fuel supply so the Little Horse would condescend to run far  enough to get us home.  Ah so.  Demonstrating my superior intellect again, I reached down, stuck a screwdriver in the slot and turned the engine off.  Yes.  I did that.  Oh well,  I tried all the blades on the Swiss Army knife and the tweezers, but nothing would budge the switch, and the fuel cap was always tougher to deal with than the ignition.  I sat in my tiny chair hoping for the noodles to come soon and feeling rather (helpless, stupid, hopeful (mechanics abound), idiotic. . .you pick the adjective) when the Archaeologist (with a completely straight face) pointed out that I had had the key at the last (closed) lunch stop and therefore it was undoubtedly somewhere in the kilometer between here and there.  It was.  On the edge of a mud puddle right in front of that closed place in fact, probably crying because we'd gone off and left it, though keys don't cry very loud.

Anyway, we survived the late lunch and headed home, intending to go more or less directly (there was lots of time before sunset, but you don't like to tempt fate that far from home).  We stuck pretty much to the plan until I saw a too spectacular view from the clifftop off to the side of the road and pulled over on the far side of the tamarisk tree and began photographing the islands in the middle distance of the rumpled sea.  The Archaeologist, having stopped behind me and pulled over on the other side of the tree began with photos of the long arc of beautiful beach and village below.  In the softest, least excited voice possible she announced that the beach was covered with surf boats and they looked like basket composites.  She was right.

I know this story is getting a little long, but bear with me. . .you still have to hear about the village streets!  The entire frontage of the highway is obstructed with residences, walls and locked gates EXCEPT for one well concealed diagonal entrance into the maze.  It started at the highway as a wide enough little lane, but narrowed quickly to one-bike width  with a little elbow room on each side.  People stared in amazement and I began to worry a little, but one gentleman stood his ground long enough for me to ask how to get to the beach (that's part of my 500 word vocabulary).  He started to explain but decided instead to draft a guide for us.  Somebody (innocent passerby) tried to pass by us on the back of another motorbike and having been drafted, climbed on behind me and pointed off down the street (goat path?)  It was only two more turns and a few hundred feet to the set of stairs that lead to the beach.  There was no space to park the bikes (nor to turn them around when we got ready to leave) so we just blocked somebody's doorway and went down to the  most fabulous hour or so on the beach. . .gorgeous boats, friendly people, lots of questions and answers from all sides. . .and we did escape finally, though it took me and two husky youngsters to get my bike pointed back up the street.

There's a little more.  We were sure they'd told us they'd depart to go fishing at 8:30 in the morning.  The archaeologist had to catch a bus to Nha Trang, so I was elected to get up early enough to make that 8:30 launching parade. I actually got to the beach, already packed and loaded for my own ride to Nha Trang right after 0700 and there was not a single boat on the beach.  More than 50 surf boats and at least that many round baskets with little outboard motors. . .gone.  Yikes.  But wait!! One was arriving.  Over the next hour and a half they came in a steady stream, working through the (quite ugly) surf in front of their landing, running in to be met by a crowd of helpers, dragged a ways up the beach, and "rotated" the rest of the way, then setting up to empty the nets and get the fish off to market.  The whole village, I'm sure!  It was utterly stunning, notwithstanding the occasional rain and wind squall.  Give us a few days and we'll put a full description up on www.BoatsAndRice.com.

And that was it. . .I didn't have to worry about getting wet in the rain showers that dotted the day, I'd already gotten soaked on the beach.  Lunch in a favorite restaurant (in Dai Lanh), and into Nha Trang in mid afternoon.  A grand day's work.

Just gorgeous rice (ready for cutting) and sweet little farm houses.  Some of the best of Viet Nam.

Our coffee coming back from the market to the little floating restaurant.  Cute kid, was NOT hiding from me, it was just raining hard.

Really nice little local utility and fishing vessels. . .powered with small Chinese diesels, they're very nicely made and look to be excellent small sea boats.

A village "chua". . .temple sort of place, probably with a resident monk or two.

Tiny little boat yard.  They haul out on what amounts to a wagon, yard the boat up on the hard with a small diesel winch,

The Archaeologist pestering a fisherman. . .basketry bottom and wooden upperworks, mostly fastened with trunnels and sealed with the traditional buffalo dung and tree resin caulking

The whole village. . .just about ready to go to sea

Home from the sea, or almost anyway!  I did not see a single boat get in trouble making landing, though a couple had to bail a little water before they were hauled up the beach,

I don't think much of anything got over the gunnel.  These boats are chubby but really good!

"Rotating" up the beach, first one end then the other, pick up the end and walk it around.  Three men make a crew, but ten or more help get her up the hill.

Shake the fish out of the net (straighten it out as you go), get them into plastic boxes, and off to market.

Two days around Quy Nhon (The tale of the Tin Canoe and other stuff)

Written from Quy Nhon (Central Viet Nam) 14 November 2013
We've spent two full days in the field here and there's a bit to tell.  Yesterday was fabulous and today was well, not quite fabulous, but what the heck.  Yesterday's weather was hot and fine until an evening thunderstorm dampened (and cooled) things down.  Today was threatening all day but only got us wet a few times, and never anything that wouldn't dry pretty quickly.  We (and for now that means my resident archaeologist, her bike, the Little Horse, and me) we, as I was saying, have several different missions here and we've been working away at them to the tune of ten hours or so both days out on the road.  The archaeologist wants to see archaic boat construction (that's an overlap, so do i) and to actually look at the see the sea marks, rocks, islands and bays that she's been studying in old archived sailing directions from the 16th and 17th century.  To the extent such places are gorgeous or fascinating I'm happy to go along with that too.  I'm trying to locate at least one traditional building site with a mid-sized traditional double ended boat of the local style under construction. . .well, really, I'd like three or four of them a week or two apart and all of them being actively worked on. . .might as well wish big.  So, the archaeologist's been doing pretty well with her sea marks and bays and I've found. . .well. . .tin canoes?

Yesterday was definitely the day of the tin canoe.  Everywhere in Viet Nam has a standard tin canoe these days, a boat that would have had timber topsides and a woven basket bottom a few years ago. . .now has the same wooden topsides and a tin (or sometimes plastic barrel) bottom.  We stumbled across one lying in the weeds next to a coffee shop tent beside a storm sewer outfall at the head of a fishing boat moorage.  Fortunately, the coffee is very strong here.  Anyway, we rolled it over to get a better look, photographed it from all angles and drank more coffee.  Then all day long variations on the tin canoe theme kept leaping up at us.   In the course of looking for outlooks overlooking sea marks we saw them in their abundance.There were tin canoes for paddling, for sculling, for rowing facing forward with your hands (standing up) and rowing facing forward with your feet (sitting down).  There were tin canoes fishing with nets and setting crab pots and just going somewhere.  We talked to rowers and fishermen and grand daughters of woven canoe builders.  We saw them singly at a distance and in flocks of a dozen (or more) up close (canoes, not grand daughters).   There were all the other local boats too, but at the end of the day, it was tin canoes we'd seen.

Some of the sea marks and bays were truly gorgeous.  Others were just blue lumps of islands on the horizon, but you could readily imagine they might have really mattered to some 16th century European (or Arab or Chinese or Japanese. . .) sailorman wishing he knew where he was.  It was really good exploring all along the coast north of the city.  I found an ancient carcass of a small fishing boat at the right degree of ripeness to allow examination of all its structure, and there were some delightful surprises there, secrets revealed and so forth.  And there was more, I just can't think of it all right now.

And what of today you ask. . .well.  We DID finally get to the Cham towers out on the Highway after we got un-lost.  I took the wrong road out of town and then thought I'd made a mistake so turned around but I was wrong, it wasn't a mistake and we should have kept going, so we went back.  Very impressive.  We went wandering down a narrow lane looking for the bay and found a river and no more road to follow it downstream.  We DID have a great lunch of two sorts of meat wrapped in rice paper with a salad and some crispy things I don't know what were.  We did think to buy gas (barely) in time (her bike has a very small tank), we did find some old beached boats, one with what I think is an anomalous rudder, and we did, no kidding, ride down a mile of very very narrow one lane road with really skinny high bridges and houses and/or water up tight on both sides and a grade and middle school just letting out at the end of the road, where we were squeezed in between the school yard fence and the house on the left (did I mention, with water all around) and besieged by a good hundred kids who thought we were absolutely hilarious.  Then a few mom's came to sort out their kids and after that a drunk dad turned up to sort out his wife and. . .sometimes it goes like that. . .but the kids were fantastic.  Or rather, they thought we were. Did I mention tin canoes? Besides the hundreds of them everywhere clamoring for attention, we saw one being built  (can you believe they're making still MORE of the things?? is there anybody who doesn't already have one??) and I got a few photos of that while the archaeologist kept 20 kids in line (and in stitches) out on the (very very narrow) one way road (with water on both sides).  And we did get home to the city before dark.  Not much before dark, but it worked.  Here's some of what we saw. . .

Your basic tin canoe set up for rowing with your feet (bicycle style),  Lean into the back rest, set your feet in the old sandals and off you go.  Part your hair down the middle for balance.

An interesting basket boat in need of a new tarp. . .rowing a tin canoe standing up.  Forget about parting the hair.

Really big new fishing vessel getting her engine (just disappeared down through where the engine room roof will go someday soon).

The elusive local small to mid sized fishing and utility vessel. . .I need to come up with a better name for them. . .in the fishing harbor in Quy Nhon

Quy Nhon water taxi

The Quy Nhon version of "water taxi",  with quite a load on.  Actually, these peapod-like rowing boats are quite nicely shaped, just a little old and tired in places.

Nearing completion, her engine, transmission, shaft and prop all installed, still needs a rudder and a good bit of work upstairs.  These are fastened about 80% with wooden "tree nails" and 20% with galvanized bolts. Really stout boats, wood from Laos in long clear lengths.  

Quy Nhon dock.

A fine little double ender, the old traditional sailing hull, built though as a motor boat, with a motor boat's rudder and no center board or sailing rig at all.  

By golly, harvesting water spinach (morning glory family actually).  it's a very nice cooked green, with tender stems as well as nice leaves. . .I've eaten a lot of it but never saw it being cut before. . .from a round basket boat!!

A sweet old lady about at the end of her days, but willing to tell us the secrets of her building and a bit of her history.  At least at the end she was a motor boat, though she had a wooden sailboat's rudder.  There's no visible sign of a deck or a cabin, I think she was just a sturdy open work boat, though there's a lot of her missing.  

A square Cham Tower. . .from the corner.  Never thought to take that angle before!  These are about 800 years old I believe, but have been extensively restored/repaired in a series of efforts.  All the statuary has been chiseled off the sides and presumably sold.  Sigh.  There should be Shivas and Ganeshes and that sort of personage, but they're all gone.

A narrow and somewhat rickety bridge, though it was placarded for 500 kg loads, way more than a man and a motorbike.

The archaeologist ready to ride.  

The most incredible gold (pink?) fish I've ever seen. . .in a coffee shop a kilometer from the Cham towers.  After my masterful wander we felt entitled to a coffee.

A sea mark. . .what the archaeologist wanted. A really tiny little harbor and a village nearby.

Fishing at sunset--Quy Nhon.  He's just checking the net. . .nobody was caught, so he'll lower it back to the bottom in a moment and wait for someone to swim by. . .