The last time in my life before I had chicken blood on my hands (and tires)

“I could tell you guys have spent some time in Vietnam.”

Duc waved us over to sit with him. “You’re at this bar.” A freelance motorbike tour operator, Aaron and I had admired his ride as he arrived, although commenting to each other that he looked slightly ridiculous astride such a large hog.

We considered his words quite the compliment.

Crazy house

It was a very Vietnamese beer café. As soon as we sat down a woman in a matching beer endorsed outfit—in this case a green number for Beer Saigon—came over and immediately clinked down mugs each filled with a giant ice cube and bottles of beer beading with condensation in the humid night. One plate of nuts and one of kim chi. Duc had a dried squid, torn up into pieces. The waitress, a friend of his, was sitting with us. She kept staring at Aaron. Was he French? She fidgeted and watched. Duc translated certain items of conversation for her.

View from the highway to Elephant Falls

What he was translating, however, was hardly highbrow. In true tour guide fashion we were swiftly regaled with tales punctuated by expressions “meat banana” and “punani”. Did we like Vietnamese women? Several beers later I asked if I could take his bike for a spin. “Why fucking not?” Another favourite of his, “Oh my Buddha!” He slapped me on the back as he laughed. That one must always kill with the tourists.

We eventually left to go to a pool hall. More beer and nuts. The locals crowded around as we played. We started hot, each potting a series of balls before we regressed to the inebriated mean. They kept checking in.

Elephant falls

We were in Nha Trang and trying to avoid the Thailand-style strip that was riddled with gaudy bars and sunburnt tourists eating pizza, pasta and burgers. We dined on Banh Xeo, a sort of pancake studded with quail eggs and seafood, served with a sweet and orange glutinous rice paste, salad and a slightly sour sauce. $1 each.

The decision to go to Nha Trang was one made less on the promise of the town than the ride it would take to get there from Da Lat where we had been staying for three days. Very French and in the mountains, it was cold and my bike showed the strain of many kilometres as it struggled to torque its way up the hills to get there.

Banh Mi man

The main nightlife in Da Lat took place at coffee houses in which groups of youths would smoke and drink coffee and tea with aggressive techno blasting incongruously. The town is pretty. The man-made lake at the centre algae green. The crazy house gaudi-esque. Breakfast baguettes and coffee. After leaving them behind in Kon Tum the Estonians caught up with us again.

Drinking red wine out of beer cans—a brand not supplied at the bar at which we were surreptitiously consuming—we played pool and talked shit with some travellers we’d run into previously in Hoi An and one of whom I had met in Bangkok almost two months prior. Eventually there was a minor confrontation with the bar owner who demanded a surcharge on our canned wine. The Estonians haggled it down.

Wine in a can

Previously they had sauntered into another bar with three bottles of wine for which we lacked the requisite means to open. Not only did they get three corks three-quarter drawn, but also enjoyed a sampling of a finer quality Da Lat red on the recommendation of the barman. This was shortly after they strolled into a large and fancy hotel in the hopes of bluffing their way into the sauna. Later still they would steal the keys from the reception of Aaron’s and my hotel in order to plunder a room for a guitar and ancient bottles of spirits. An act that made the next day’s checkout somewhat tense.

Clouds

On budget malaria pills in anticipation of heading south the Mekong Delta, Aaron had been taking the wrong dose for some days—double the required amount—and the side effects had been doubling down. Sunburnt and stinging, the quest for powerful sunscreen and aloe vera ended with a tiny bottle of SPF 45 and a tube of nappy rash cream. Later attempts to protect his scorched knuckles included bandages that frequently unclipped and fingerless gloves, relics of Turkey.

The rain fell heavily in Da Lat. Discrete, large, wet, and every afternoon. We spent the second morning hunting the Elephant Falls. Another pleasure of a the self-guided biking tour of Vietnam is that instead of having to book a day-tour or catch a taxi we always have the means of traversing along some spectacular mountain highway and exploring all at a fraction of the rate and with a much grander sense of adventure.

Out of the clouds

As Aaron hobbled more slowly behind on his still troublesome toe I ventured too far into the falls and became drenched by spray. Needing little more excuse, I was next to be found sitting under the cascade. Aaron, in his jeans and t-shirt, followed suit. Other tourists came and stared, but none joined us. Then, when we saw locals fishing in the pool behind the fall, we decided we too should be able to swim there. A fine plan until getting out proved slightly slippery.

Sitting with Duc several nights later in Nha Trang we told him of our adventure. He, like the guides who had seen us drenched and emerging from the falls that day, was incredulous that we had gone swimming. He remarked, more colourfully, that the water was not so clean. Upstream the feeder river is apparently quite a popular toilet.

Highway to Elephant Falls

He did tip us off to a cleaner waterfall a few kilometres north of Nha Trang, the Ba Ho Falls. So the next morning we headed there before going south towards Mui Ne. It took a rutted and muddy path that saw several stalls and a new coat of mud on my bag, a small walk and some stone hopping before we arrived. While less spectacular than the elephant falls in volume and power, we were promised we could jump off some rocks into the pool at the base of the waterfall, and so we did as a Russian girl photographed us and promised to send the pictures once she got home.

Vista

At the top of the mountain that was en route to Nha Trang from Da Lat I could not see more than ten metres in front of me. The ascent was such that the road travelled now through low lying cloud. With no functioning electrics and thus no light on my bike, I was slowed to a crawl. Waterfalls punctuated the road, flowing down the sheer face on one side, under the road, and down the sheer drop on the other. Eventually the road dropped out of the clouds as it slunk down the mountain, each turn offering a new vantage point for a hazy blue world rendered gradually into focus.

View from the hotel, Phan Danh

Out of the cloud and rain we dried on the road down, the temperature climbing steadily until the return of thick humidity at the bottom. Thirty kilometres more and we were in a squall of driving rain, painful as it hit the body exposed on a powering motorbike. Minutes later we were back in sunshine, the brooding clouds behind us and the rice paddies bordering the arrow-straight highway lurid in the afternoon sun, blue mountains and blue sky casting stark relief.

En route to Mui Ne from Nha Trang we were hung over and burning. We pulled over to refuel. The man shook his hand in a fashion reminiscent of a loose and spread-fingered Queen’s wave. The Vietnamese sign for ‘no.’ We sat on our bikes blinking in the glare off the tarmac. Across the road water glistened through and arch. There was also a hotel. We decided we’d had enough for the day.

Maxin' relaxin'

 
Phan Danh, I believe the place was called, although it is unlisted on google maps. There were two hotels next to each other with one other visitor who we met over breakfast the next morning. From our window shone the ocean, Mediterranean coloured and coral filled. In the morning fishermen in round tubs manoeuvred by an eggbeater paddling style went from beach to boat. In the late afternoon kids swarmed around the rock formations chasing crabs and families emerged for a cooling dip. At night the breeze was a caress. As I sat reading on the beach a man came over and squatted next to me. After staring for a minute or so he got up and walked off.

Fisherfriends

The smell of dried squid and salt hangs over much of the south eastern coastal highway. On the inland sections there are root vegetables foraged through controlled burning, cut and placed on tarpaulin to dry on the sun baked tarmac. They have a wonderful sweet carbohydrate smell.

Tiny town gives way to slightly larger town, then suddenly a strip of resorts. Mui Ne town is small and quiet, home to a bay full of fishing boats. The coastal highway we’d taken to get there from Phan Danh so undeveloped we ended up in a town at one stage painted like a Moroccan medina before it followed a beach on which a shanty village of mismatched corrugated iron and tarpaulin housed the local fishermen who shared soggy cigarettes with Aaron and used their phones to take photos standing next to me.

He liked my sunnies

Scattered resorts on the drive in to the town give the illusion of a sleepy coastal retreat. Until you hit the long stretch of placid beach between Mui Ne town and Phan Thiet which is crammed shoulder-to-shoulder with guest houses, resorts, restaurants, bars. It is a bit gross. The first night we stayed at a budget resort with the Estonians before making a hung over transition to a grungy guest house back closer to Mui Ne town in an area far more Vietnamese and far more Aaron’s and my sensibilities. We tried surfing. Tried.

"Kowabunga, dude!"

Swimming at Ho Coc beach at sunset Aaron and I would periodically shy away in the water. Yet another ambiguous plastic bag slash jellyfish. The beaches of Vietnam area fairly accurate representation of the country as a whole, stunningly beautiful but also inundated with garbage. Riding down one highway twenty kilometres outside of Mui Ne across which the wind blew laterally, one side was shrub and red earth, the other shrub and red earth and rubbish amongst which the cows grazed methodically.

School kids

12.43am and I was in the bushes outside the hotel. Seconds earlier I had been in bed after a pleasant evening’s dining on the one strip of shops in a village picked at random along Ho Coc beach. Torches flashed along the row of rooms. I had been hustled out through a side gate in only my boxers and was huddled behind a tree attempting to flatten my body against the ground, prickly and crunching. A mosquito buzzed around me and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was malarial. The police were doing a hotel inspection and with my passport in Ho Chi Minh city, I apparently was somewhat of an illegal. We had been tipped off to their arrival and briefed of the escape protocols, but it hadn’t made my hurried exit less absurd.

Sunset, Ho Coc

I woke the next morning to explosive diahorrea and vomiting. The previous night’s seafood was not sitting well. So vile the bathroom was a biohazard. Dehydrated but emptied, we decided we had to get out of there. So a 140km motorbike through the midday heat to Ho Chi Minh City was on the cards, sweating and burning. I lost Aaron somewhere in the clusterfuck of traffic. Pulling over at the nearest struggled upstairs and messaged him the address before basically passing out and sleeping for the next 16 hours.

Passes and plankton

Around the unshaded fluorescent bulb seven pale green gekkos are perfectly still. On the dirty white wall there is a silent tension, a guarded stillness foreshadowing action. Below are aluminium tables with jugs of tea and chairs. A glass cupboard on a counter top with various toppings for rice. A moth is drawn to the bulb and suddenly there is a flurry, the gekkos attempting to anticipate its point of collision with the wall and intercept it. Another bug and the frenetic dance begins anew.

It is around half past six and Aaron and I are starving after 280km on the road, a distance which takes our sum total travelled to around 1500km. What is doable in a day or two of driving has taken us eleven days, albeit not all of them on the road.

Hai Van pass (credit to Mr. Weston)

From Kham Duc to Ho Lake—the latter chosen simply on the strength of its name—the highway changed from rutted dustbowl of construction to fertile valley. Earlier still from Hue it was coast-hugging and salt-drenched. The air thick with brine and the highway broad, flat and expansive like an American boulevard. We stopped in Hoi An for two nights.

At our hostel in Hanoi we had met two Estonian girls who came into our dorm as Aaron and I were in bed and about to go to sleep the night before we first took to the motorways of Vietnam. Hearing of our plans they said they might join us in Hue and ride south with us. Little did we expect that four days later we would meet them, and one day after that they would have bikes. A test run with with a trip to the Thien Mu Pagoda before planning to leave the next morning. So we were four over the modest 120 kilometre stretch from Hue to Da Nang.

Religion (more Weston credit)

The reality of four second hand bikes compared to two is less glamorous highway roaming motorcycle gang and more double the breakdowns and pit stops. Not to mention the forgotten passport, the keys that fell out of the ignition mid-ride, and the difficulty of synchronising the movement of four people through Vietnamese highway traffic.

Hue Grandma

In the driving rain the going was even slower and newly purchased rain jackets much needed. At the start of the climb through the Hai Van pass we were briefly trapped by boom gates as a freight train chugged past. The cliffs fell away on the left to the sea, carpeted with forest. On the right more forest and a steep climb up through which the highway serpentined. The rain slacked and the views were spectacular. We climbed into a cloud which, in the winds at the crest, rolled past us at an even clip and out to sea.

A herd of goats trotted along the lane in the opposite direction, their chaperone wizened and strolling opposite, crook over his shoulder. Later a herd of cows moving with us, indifferent to the stunning vista off to the side.

Thien Mu Pagoda, Hue

 Not far from the top of the pass Anna’s bike wouldn’t start. She was out of petrol. Marta wasn’t much better off. They had trusted the guys who had sold them the bikes that the tanks were full. We stopped. With no plan of action we milled around. Two passing men stopped to investigate. We showed them the empty tank and they set about filling an empty bottle of water with petrol by detaching a fuel hose that linked to the engine and siphoning some off. One of them did this first to his bike. He refused to take any money for the 500ml of petrol. With a cigarette drooping from his lower lip he then drained some of Aaron’s tank, and reallocated it, spilling some in his casual ease. He and his friend motored off.

Traffic

At some point during the descent into Da Nang I was on my own. I turned and went down the highway in the direction from which we’d come and saw Aaron, Anna and Marta going in the opposite direction, but by the time I’d found a point to u-turn on the divided road, they were long gone. Trying to catch up I was caught in Da Nang’s peak hour traffic. I pulled over for a text message conference—one eagerly studied by the locals who eyed me on the side of the road and tried to offer me some pho—and decided to meet at the hotel. With the address on my phone I arrived to find a bar full of old men and no hotel. Tweaking the address after further research, I ended up on the peninsula in the backstreets. The sun was setting and none of my electrics were working. In the dark I found the address. No hotel. With my phone on flashlight setting and jammed between some wires behind my speedo, I had a small indication of my existence on the unlit streets. I eventually found a hotel and got the others to meet me there. Lacking a phone with maps, they had to keep asking locals for directions.

Hoi An Pageant

From Da Nang to Hoi An we detoured via a temple with an enormous religious figure, the name of which google doesn’t seem to know. As Aaron and I rested in the shade some tourists sent their children over to have a photo taken with us. Then a steady stream of older women.

Vistas

Midnight swimming in Hoi An on a beach pitch black and deserted. Seven hours ago we had been here having dinner. Tea lights dotted on the sand amongst reed mats and vendors set up replete with tiny red plastic chairs and tables. We had brought some red wine, opened by jamming the cork down and into the bottle with a chopstick. The softened and eerie illumination of a fluorescent lantern placed under the table and a candle on top. Now the only light came in flickers and bursts from plankton, agitated in the passage of limbs, swirls and eddies in the liquid black. We bodysurfed, staring at the waves out of the corner of our eyes to try and try and pick out the best before they were upon us.

Vistas

The next night we came upon some kind of International Ladies Day pageant. We arrived just in time for a musical number, a doughy man in a snug white suit and white shoes flatly belting out a power ballad and jiving to the guitar solo. The speakers were aggressively loud and the first time he tried to start singing the microphone was not on. His foot tapped nervously. Later in Kon Tum outside a Honda dealership an alfresco concert had stopped traffic, motorcycles in the lee of the road division and pedestrians spilling out onto the asphalt. I have no idea what was taking place.

Yom

Rumble in the Bronx was on. The original sound played softly overlaid with Vietnamese dubbing all done in the same woman’s voice. Aaron and I were having a coffee in the fisherman’s village south of the Hoi An old town. Two locals had come over after we had sat down to shake our hands and have a coffee. The one sitting next to me kept clasping my upper leg and squeezing. Slapping it approvingly. As we paid I was informed the old woman working there thought I was beautiful.

I showed the piece of paper with the name of the local delicacy I wanted to try to the old woman who ran a good eatery just down the road from our hotel in Hue. She shook her head, no she didn’t have it. We ordered. She gave us the food and hurried off. Just as we were finishing she came back with some take away plastic bags. She had fetched me the delicacy from another vendor, a kind of translucent pho jelly with fried shrimp inside cooked in a banana leaf and served with a sweet and hot sauce. She loaded portions onto a spoon and fed me. And soft rice pancakes with dried shrimp and fried garlic and onion. She rubbed my facial hair enthusiastically. When we went back for dinner later she hugged me and Aaron and kissed the girls.

Spotlight

Searching for food after 9pm is a struggle in Vietnam. People eat early. In Hue the only thing approaching a vegetarian dish we could find for Aaron was a plate of old and hardening steamed rice with a side bowl of salt and pepper.

The start of the trip from Hoi An to Kham Duc was a chore. We were late on the road after Aaron’s and my socks had been lost in the laundry and Marta’s tailored shoes had needed to be resized. The roads were awful. Clogged arterial highway and rutted paths with unmarked turnoffs that were not marked on google maps. At one point the highway mapped simply stopped in the middle of nowhere. In real life it thankfully continued on. Frequently I could be seen standing astride my idling motorcycle and peering at my phone, twisting it to align the GPS’ directional arrow like I was trying to divine water with a forked stick.

Mo vistas

Down one road a man chased a pig that had escaped from his trailer. A moped going the other way attempted to block the fleeing beast by pulling laterally across the road. Two minor services, one flat tire and one chain tightening passed. We eventually hit lushly verdant hills through which we climbed before coming to a dam. We made it to Kham Duc just in time for my motorcycle to stop working. The engine was dead and I was directed to house number 44. In the backyard a man worked on several motorcycles. His name was Yom. I would spend many hours with him.

Kid on my bike

I fetched two coffees from across the street to pass the time as he worked on my bike. I came back to find he had had two fetched from another café across the street. He worked and sipped. I sat and sipped. Aaron came to watch and in turn have his bike checked out. Yom was keen to snaffle some of his Marlboros, fishing them out of the packet with his teeth, his hands grease blackened. As night fell I played an improvised version of Spotlight with the kids next door using Yom’s head torch, then the flash on my camera. Three hours had passed and my bike had been almost entirely disassembled and rebuilt. The next morning I went back to tweak the idling speed of my motor only to have a crack in my main weight bearing metal structure identified. Yom’s brother arrived to change the oil in his bike. His look was focused as he pieced together the English. “Your moto… very bad.” He nodded seriously. Later he questioned me. “Where are you from?” “How old are you?” “Do you like Vietnam” “Do you have a lover?” He started to tell me about his sister.

Estonians

As the sun moved across the sky it fell on a bird’s cage. It hung across the road from the coffee shop in which I was drinking with some locals who had waved me over as I walked past. They couldn’t speak English but seemed to enjoy a foreign presence. One of the men rose from his seat and walked across. He unhooked the cage from its perch and searched for somewhere shaded to place it. Judging by his several attempts to find a suitable spot, he clearly didn’t do this regularly.

Post-crash filth Weston

Overlooking Ho Lake there is a row of shack houses. Each with its own dog, the slight changes in bark marked our passage down the gravel path. Some children came out to investigate as we sat to watch the sun set over the rice paddies. We took photos and showed them. One ran off to tell his sister who had stayed with the bike they had rode over on, covertly whispering in her ear. They rode off. Later, another child came over and climbed the tree behind us. Once he saw his photo he too ran off. Insects buzzed and birds sang out. The rice paddies unnaturally green, the water gently fractured and the mountains blue. A motor chugged then a loud firing sound. The birds screeched louder.

Highway to Ho Lake

Earlier in the day we had traversed barren dry foothills, dusty shrubs and sun so hot the burn can be felt at 80 km/hr. Buttock pulverising highways. Roadside cafes with blue tarpaulin, rusting corrugated iron, hammocks. The earth became red and the highway through the hills was hemmed with pine trees. Scattered fires and the smell of burning needles so heady it is almost like cardamom. Tractors with open engines and clunking prehistoric gears seem rent from some dystopian agrarian past all redblack rust and black exhaust chug up and down.

Red Earth

The traffic picked up towards Buon Ma Thuot, the trucks and detached semi-trailers ruling the single lane highway. Repeatedly motorbikes would scatter into the dusty shoulder, the buses and trucks trapped mid-over take on the wrong hand side honking and flashing their lights as insurance against their aggressive incompetence. Impatiently trying to overtake one detached semi I tried the inside gravel shoulder, almost crashing as my tractionless wheels slurred.

Ho Lake

Earlier in the day a bike had pulled out of a side street in front of Aaron and tried to cross the highway into the lane going the opposite direction. Braking and dove-tailing, Aaron collided with the brand new Honda, denting its side. Perhaps recognising his wrong or perhaps intimidated by Aaron’s outrage at his near death, he rode off. A smoke and a sugary drink later and Aaron’s hands stopped shaking.

Locals

Sunscreen, sweat and road dirt combine to form a brown grime. My thighs are many shades darker where my shorts end, knees sunburnt. Aaron’s faceguard finishes mid cheek and around his nose. His face is always smeared with grit.

We broke free of the dirty highways and into a valley. Verdant and patchwork with paddies and irrigation. In the late afternoon sun the shadows are long and the air heavy with grass, dung, straw and mud. It is tantalising and beautiful.

Breakdowns and buffalo

We shared a look. It wasn’t of panic or rage, frustration or impotence. One of bemused resignation. On the shoulder on a nameless part of the Ho Chi Minh highway, poncho in tatters, Aaron wheeled his motorbike to a stand. The rain was steady and indifferent.

Leaning my weight against the hill’s grade, I balanced the bike while Aaron prodded at its slack and displaced chain, stick in hand, fingers slick with greyblack grease. Yesterday it had detached three times and after a bit of hotel-mechanicry we thought the problem was fixed. Less than an hour into the day’s ride it had popped off again, been reattached, repeated. Now going up a hill, every time Aaron tried to change gear it would dislodge.

Traffic

While Aaron crouched and worked the other denizens of the motorway, putting up the incline on motorbikes, watched with steadily rotating necks until out of view. One, with a small trailer that looked like it usually carried single batches of livestock, pulled over. He looked at Aaron’s bike. He tapped my petrol tank and mimed for my keys. He got on a revved. Opening the back of his trailer, he and Aaron heaved his stricken bike into the back. Aaron jumped in after it. I got into gear and fell in behind. We started off up and over then down the hill. The rain continued.

Five minutes passed and we slowed to pull off the highway up an unmarked, rutted and puddle riddled side slope. More dirt than path, more mud than dirt. Tyres skidding, I followed. We slowed outside a house. A concrete cube with one side missing and a sheet metal overhang veranda. Several birdcages took up a quarter of the main living area. A TV was playing a Vietnamese soap opera and two men slowly raised as we rattled to a halt.

For Mum 

They talked in Vietnamese with our chaperone and Aaron’s bike was wheeled out. In a crouch the smaller and leaner of the two men started to examine it. He had on a distressed turtleneck with infrequent holes through which peeked skin scarred from chickenpox or something similar. He took apart the gear guard and took out a piece. He compared it to a new one and showed the edges worn from smooth curve to a sharp and straight rasp. He tightened Aaron’s chain.

Concerned about the wobble on my back wheel, I was next. The clunking of my gear changes also turned out to be due to a loose chain which he shortened by several links. He checked my air pressure by banging at the wheel with a hammer. Once adjusted, he fine-tuned his analysis with a spanner. All was mended. For 10,000 dong. 50c. Aaron’s repairs cost $2. The man who brought us here wouldn’t accept anything more than a handshake.

Our breakdown friend

We rode on. Through lush green national park, down into a flat plain through which the highway struck straight until lost into the horizon. Rice paddies green and irrigation waters brown. Sky a glaucoma whitegrey. Nearing midday we were 1km out of a town as signposted on the highway stone markers and cruising at 70km/hr when my tyre blew out. At first I didn’t know what was happening, just that I was wobbling dangerously. Thankfully my reflexes for motorbiking were far enough developed that my panicked choking at handles and pedals resulted in braking, not wild acceleration. Front wheel sagging forlornly, I started pushing.

Mechanic #1

In the town at the next turnoff people materialised out the front of their houses to watch and offer advice in Vietnamese, pointing vaguely down the road. A group of young guys had me wait while one ran out the back, returning with a foot pump. I appreciated the sentiment. One family pointed me down an alleyway. Aaron cruised ahead to scout out the tip and called me down. After about half an hour of searching, we had a mechanic. For the $5 he replaced the wheel’s inner tubing. For a further $2 he tuned up Aaron’s motor which was idling far too high and soothed his clunking gear changes. Next door lived one of the onlookers and we were encouraged into their living room come restaurant for pho and tea. It was dark and the mirror behind the table cloudy with dirt and smudges. The daughter had been to Melbourne and showed us photos of the Flinders Street Station on her phone. A man held a young child and watched TV. The mother looked on as we ate. Aaron surreptitiously redistributed the slices of beef from his bowl to mine. We were still soaked from the rain that had been falling intermittently and the hot broth gently warmed us.

Mechanic #2

Back on the road we motored on. All was going well as we swept up towards slowly gathering hills. In the mid-afternoon Aaron’s chain popped off again. I rode to the petrol station we had just passed with the bundle of maps the motorcycle retailer in Hanoi had given us with some handy phrases hand written on the back. “Where is the mechanic?” I ran my finger under the line. He pointed across the road. Aaron rolled down the hill on which he had broken down and pushed the rest of the way.

The man crouched and worked, balancing the bike on an offcut of scaffolding as a makeshift means of elevating the rear wheel. I had to lean on the front, Aaron holding up the back. He noted my height with the customary process of measuring himself against my shoulder and raising his hand to my head. He had a rude wooden hut as his garage, a rather nice house behind. His young daughter looked on, an even younger child in her arms. He first bawled but then stopped to more closely stare at me before falling asleep.

Kids

The mechanic went to fetch a part and on the way back to the bike brushed my crotch with the back of his hand. He grabbed himself at the elbow and clenched his arm and fist. Then he pointed at his crotch as he squatted back down, poking his thumb out and against his clenched forefinger so as to only project the tip. A nearby chunk of wooden pole was similarly utilised as a physical analogue. He was very amused. As were we. Then he got handsy. A handful of my crotch. Then a handful of Aaron’s. More forearm gesticulation. Next he started trying to lift us up.

Eventually he replaced and reinforced the rear part that allows you to adjust the tension of the chain. We motored out. About three kilometres later, the chain was off again. This time it was a man in three quarter army-green shorts and a matching shirt over a bright yellow t-shirt who cycled past and pointed us to the nearest mechanic, mere metres away. The mechanic was very chatty and kept making jokes in Vietnamese—at least I assume so, judging by the response of those around. The entourage was sizeable. Women from next door came over to watch, gumboots on. One stopped mid-conversation to pick up a rock to throw at some chickens who had wandered into the adjacent rice paddy.

1, 4, 5!

He took apart the entire rear section of the bike. Wheel, chain, gear cogs, miscellaneous parts all greasy and dirt caked. He started putting it back together with a few new pieces. He snorted and spat on the floor nearby as he worked, the only interruption to his stream of jests. Another onlooker with a moped who kept powering in and out kept up an even steadier commentary. It became obvious he was a bit of a smartarse.

The mechanic went back into his house and emerged with an empty Beer Hanoi can. He took to it with metal scissors, cutting off the top and bottom and coming away with a strip. He cut triangles out of one side, and rolled the finished product around a circular bearing, wrapping down the teeth he’d cut to hold it in place. He then took this piece, laid it upon the hole into which it would rest, and with a hammer bashed it within. Aaron and I shared a look.

Drying shoes

He proceeded to put together the rest of the rear section, stopping to pick up bits he’d forgotten and go back to fit them in, tossing aside the odd washer. Aaron’s gear cover had been distended from his chain popping off and he attempted some rudimentary panel beating. The section snapped off. He giggled and reattached the partially broken guard. The fragment broken off lay discarded. The process had taken almost an hour and was still on going. We were increasingly dubious and the smart arse wouldn’t shut up. He was using us a rich seam of comic gold. He mimed for money so he could get himself and the mechanic a drink. We asked him to be quiet, the tone enough to convey our sentiment. He eventually seemed to get the idea as we offered further unfriendly looks.

$20 for new gear cogs and a chain and a reassembled rear end which had remedied the lean his back wheel had previously been on. The smart arse was taking a piss as we prepared to head off. The mechanic pointed at him and mimed a small penis. Aaron extended his little finger and waggled it. Everyone found this very amusing. Then he pointed at himself and employed the gesture of the previous mechanic, elbow clutched, fist clenched. We motored off.

Pausing to admire

Night was beginning to fall and we found a hotel within a few minutes ride—the first we’d seen for hours. We had just finished eating at a restaurant down the road when a van arrived out of which came a series of inebriated locals. A bottle of rice whiskey was decanted from a huge plastic vat into an old cloud-glass bottle with the label, ‘Men’’. We were invited over for drinks. I was measured against.

One, four, five! Shots of whiskey. In his state of excess, Anh had lost track of his numbers. We stood, clinked glasses with the delicate precision of alcohol, and toasted so. He had a boyish fringe that hung long and well shampooed, shaken down across his brow every time his laugh gave way to a high pitched giggle. It was contagious.

Aaron's steed

He was teaching us the names of the dishes across the table. The youngest kid had gotten hold of an iPhone and was snapping photos of us. An older man, tiny of frame, skin taught and in a suit, stood periodically while maintaining a constant lecture in Vietnamese directed at Aaron and I. The man who appeared to be his son was the only one at our end of the table with the presence of mind to eat, and watched on with the resigned ambivalence of familiarity with a recurring scene.

Highway

The next day we started out early working into the mountains and the bikes remained healthy. But the rain continued. Mountain climbs in third gear into the lingering mist. The drizzle was steady and fine. We were drenched to the bone. Unfolding on either side were tree tops slipping down mountains and out of cloud fading upwards and backwards into the white. We climbed ever higher and into the cloud itself, barely able to see thirty metres ahead. 10 degree inclines and slippery s-shape roads serpentine through forest on forest. The odd motorbike left by the side of the road, its owner farming silently just out of sight.

Sandals

10 degree inclines seem much steeper on the way down, the road much more slippery. Then suddenly we were out. The temperature jumped several degrees and we coasted down gentle slopes. We stopped for breakfast at a lone hotel. Sodden and shivering, we only felt the cold now we had lost the delirium of wonder and focus. Attempting to eat rice, omelette and stir fried greens the chop sticks clattered from my unresponsive hands. I started doing push ups and squats to get the blood flowing. The woman brought us tea. We raided Aaron’s pack for more layers and set off once more. Dodging buffalo wandering across the lower roads from pasture to pasture.

Wildlife

Soon we were out of the mountains entirely and on arrow straight highways deserted except for us. We raced and overtook each other. Highway sign posts signalling a town gave way to only a few wooden structures before we were out again. Dogs lounged in the middle of the road and watched as we hurtled past, unperturbed. Some ranged across with no heed to our passing providing the most dangerous obstacles.

My steed

We covered over three hundred kilometres from 100km north of Dong Hoi in a place whose name I do not know to Hue, arriving late in the afternoon. The final stretch of highway was busy. One lane in either direction, coaches hurtled down the wrong side, motorbikes huddled in the emergency shoulder. Horns blasted constantly as smaller buses wove in and out of traffic. School kids wobbling on bikes. The rain was back.

We found a hotel and went out in search of a much needed beer.

Ha Long to the highway

“Are you thinking about motorbikes?”

Hellboy had just finished and we were exhausted. Barely ten pm, it was time for bed. In Ninh Binh, 100km south of Hanoi, Aaron and I were trying to get some sleep in our dingy hotel room. I was. “Yeah, I’m visualising changing gears.”

Cat Ba traffic

It was my first day riding a manual motorcycle. Having driven some automatic mopeds over the course of my travels in SE Asia, I thought the leap from that to a manual motorcycle couldn’t be too much trouble. Yet, when Mr. Minh was trying to teach me and in turn, flog me a motorcycle, I could only manage to rev and stall. Aaron, having driven a motorbike in the past, had less difficulty re-learning the skills. In a back street somewhere in Hanoi thirty frustrating minutes passed and with me still barely able to get into gear, we bought the motorcycles anyway. Celebratory drinks and a photo for his business’ facebook page later, he and an associate were driving us back to the hostel on our new steeds, making a pit stop for helmets.

Aaron, Jess and I were back in Hanoi after a three day boat trip through Ha Long Bay. Limestone cliffs and still water, in the overcast fog the 1969 islands loomed eerily on all sides. Our boat was home to eleven people from our hostel, a Danish family of four with one particularly energetic kid, and two older Singaporean gentlemen who spoke to no one.

Ha Long Bay sans fog

Like most tours it was equal parts necessary convenience and frustration. You need a boat and papers to loiter in Ha Long Bay, something not within the means of your average backpacker unless arranged through a package deal. But in turn this comes at the cost of meandering freedom and un-allocated meal times. Also included, the inevitable bus stop at an overpriced house of tourist tat.

Ha Long Bay with fog

Breakfast is dry toast, spreads and a fried egg. The crew eats far tastier looking pho. I bemoaned the assumption that us western tourists need to be catered to with western food until Aaron had the following question from one passenger in response to Aaron’s claim of having been away for eight months, “Don’t you miss fast food?”

Jess enjoys the cabin

Fishing for squids with a kosher Israeli couple who live in a kibbutz, the fluorescent bulb hanging off the back of the boat seemed to attract only jellyfish and rubbish. They had to bring their own pots and cooking utensils to ensure the integrity of cooking equipment, and could eat very little unless they prepared it themselves. Similarly inconvenienced were the vegetarians, separated from the masses on their own table where various ethical codes and dietary restrictions provided endless fodder for conversation as well as a surfeit of food variously judged as inedible in the ideological crossfire.

Establishing the boundaries was difficult from the outset. In response to Aaron claiming to be a vegetarian the tour guide replied, “Do you eat chicken, fish?”
“No, no meat. But eggs are fine.”
“What about chicken?”

Jess and the captain

The workers on the tour boat went to bed at 9pm. This would have been less noticeable if bed wasn’t the benches in the dining room around the table at which we were drinking and chatting and playing music. It is one way to kill a buzz.

Our tour guide seemed to take untoward pleasure in showing us the “happy stick” in the Sut Ho caves, within which the lascivious minded stalactites and stalagmites had also taken the form of Romeo and Juliet and other couples in states of flagrante delicto. Outside of the Sut Ho cave a monkey was behind a sign, watching the tourists. When someone threw it a candy, it unwrapped it and stuffed it into its mouth. The wrapper lapped on waves against the rock of the national park.

Happy stick

We stayed at bungalows the second the day after a ‘trek’ through the jungle—one which Aaron was able to complete on a broken toe—and some cycling around Cat Ba island. Aaron and I embarked upon some kayaking over the course of which we saw schools of fish jumping out of the water, eagles fishing, floating village folk gutting their catch, and yet more eagles having sex. In accordance with the ethos of kayaking, we sought to navigate every narrow limestone gap and low overhanging cliff in our quest to find more wildlife.

The locals on the floating villages seem wholly indifferent to the trickle of tourist boats that drift by. Women bend their backs to rowing in blue ponchos and reed hats. People squat and repair fishing baskets, clean their catch, play with kids, cook. One man stood naked, holding his crotch, and watched as the Danish girls Sabine and Sophie passed by in a kayak.

Aaron and the tour guide bonding over Chronic 2001

‘I like you,’ mouthed the captain. Four Swedes were posing for photographs on the top deck, the Danish girls and Aaron and I were watching. On the bottom deck Jess was exchanging looks with the captain. He had taken a fancy to her on the trip to Cat Ba Island and was now blowing her kisses. He carried her bag off the boat for her, arm around her shoulders and kissing her cheek.

There was an al fresco pool table. Whenever you potted a shot there was a rumbling as the ball went through the makeshift pipe system, a thud as it landed in the dirt. Sitting around the beach bonfire—although closer to a fire—with Sabina and Sophie, we were again playing some music. Some of the locals came over to the fire too, and from their little phone began playing music of their own.

Two foolish men

The bottle of lemonade cost 6500 dong. The change I got for my 20,000 dong was 13,000 and one coffee flavoured candy with a liquid espresso centre. Hanoi also is home to egg coffee, something in which an egg yolk is whisked up with the ubiquitous Vietnamese sweetened condensed milk to make a thick and lusciously sweet foam which is poured over very strong coffee. It sounds kind of gross, but is delicous.

We saw a water puppet show that chronicled the history and traditions of Vietnam. It dragged on. The highlight was definitely the first sentence, “So sacred is the word dong (gao).” People kept clapping unnecessarily, before anything had even happened. After it we went to Fanny’s for some icecream. The puns kept coming. We celebrated Jess’ last night in Hanoi by eating a lot of quality vegetarian food and retiring to a café for tea and brownies where I invented the game Finish The Euphemism, a wittier and more crude form of Pictionary, on the paper table cloths.

Hotel managers slash mechanics

6am and in the quiet and dark morning we waited. We wanted to leave to avoid the crush of Hanoi traffic. The owner of the garage at which we had stored our newly purchased bikes had promised to be open. He was nowhere to be seen. The clocked ticked by. I paced with frustrated rage. Aaron chain smoked. A bowl of pho and a banh mi later. 7am and the sun was up, the traffic gathering, and an irate man banging on the garage door.

Bags strapped down, the first thing I did was stall my bike. Several stalls later, a conversation with some passing British backpackers about where we bought our bikes and for how much for which I was too stressed to be helpful, and we were heading south out of the centre of town. At every light I stalled. After about ten minutes I was getting the hang of it. The directions I had loaded on my phone were pretty simple, but the convenient straightness of highways lends them to peak hour traffic.

Tam Coc

And peak hour in Hanoi is packed. People wear masks over their nose and mouth in traffic. With every gap in the lanes filled with a motorcycle or moped and the buses and cars churning out black smoke, it is obvious why. Stalling here was more inconvenient than at the lights. If you hesitate you lose your spot and suddenly the channel of passage is closed for another interminable set of lights. Traffic backs up across the intersections such that the green light is whenever the logjam from the crossroads has cleared enough for more vehicles to push through, and one side is caught with a red. Highways are up to four lanes wide, some designated for cars and buses only, but this stops no one.

Gradually the traffic thinned and we were out on some open highway. We pulled over to consult my phone in the shadow of a sign with a line through a picture of a motorbike and a bicycle. This was the highway we wanted to go down. We sat and watched a few bikes go down it and decided to do the same.

This is how you row

The police pulled us over five minutes later. Waving their white batons at me and in their khaki uniforms. For a moment I considered driving past, pretending not to have seen them and in the hope they wouldn’t follow. I pulled over. After a consultation over the map and learning that we needed to go to Ninh Binh, we were waved on down the no-motorcycle highway. After about an hour another motorcyclist from a cross road joined us and started waving furiously for us to stop. He insisted we should leave the highway. We tried to explain the police had given us permission, but he understood no English. Guessing the next police mightn’t be as kind as the earlier ones, we begrudgingly followed his directions to the parallel, motorcycle friendly highway, for which he asked for a tip. We rode off.

Size defines whether you give way. I learned this almost being killed by a bus pulling across the intersection. Motorcycles chug along at anything from a leisurely trot to full throttle. This was not the scenic Ho Chi Minh highway, but the direct highway to Ninh Binh where we wanted to go to the inland Ha Long Bay, Tam Coc. 100km later we were checked into a $7 hotel room. On the fourth floor, the bathroom door didn’t lock and had windows open the stairwell and the world. With every gust of wind the door swung open. The shower was a trickle.

Tam Coc

Eight kilometres from Ninh Binh and five kilometres from the Bich Dong Pagoda is Tam Coc. For 140,000 dong a local will paddle you—using both hands and feet—in a shallow tin dinghy through picture perfect rice paddies surrounded by limestone cliffs with the odd worker bent in labour. There is a series of caves through which the river runs, ceilings low enough to require ducking.

“I’ll help you.” Aaron shunted her dinghy away. He was armed with the spare paddle in the boat with which tourists could assuage their sense of guilt at being powered along by an old lady by paddling as well. We had refused the drinks the vendor offered us, floating in her boat at the end of the river section you traverse during the tour into which the unassuming boats of tourists emerge squinting from the darkness of a cave. She had given up and was now insisting we tip our paddler, gently pushing away from our dinghy. Since we felt bad about being heavy white people and since she didn’t press any more tat on us, we did tip our paddler.

My steed

It was 53km from Ninh Binh to the nearest section of the Ho Chi Minh highway. The work of an hour. Soon the highway gave way to a rutted track. It had rained overnight and the orange mud lay heavy and slick and puddles lurked. Soon it coated our strapped packs, sneakers, legs, tyres and mufflers. Almost two and a half hours later, through more limestone-crag dotted rice paddies of buffalo and swaying green rice plants, we hit proper tarmac. We appreciated it in a new way.

The highway curved delicately upwards and between limestone outcrops. Countless shades of green in a patchwork field, edifices fading from green to grey to white into the overcast sky. Dropping down into valleys the sweet herbal perfume of sugar cane hung in the thick, humid air. The forecast had warned of rain, and at last it came. Hurtling through the drizzle I discovered by waterproof jacket wasn’t quite that, and Aaron’s poncho was ripped to tatters. By the time we stopped for lunch at a place recommended by the petrol station at which we refuelled and re-poncho’d, we were soaked.

View from the highway

The women here were greatly amused by our arrival. Aaron has a small piece of paper delineating his meal requirements which we showed them. I was taken to the kitchen. Were eggs okay? I pointed and gave the thumbs up. Then shepherded out the back to wash my hands. A woman squatted on the ground picking leaves from stems. Bowls appeared all around us and we were inundated with food. We were the only customers and the three women took turns in coming over and joining us, staring as we ate. Periodically they would intervene to show us how to use the hot plate and which combinations were appropriate. Fish sauce with the wilted greens. Garlic with the potato and egg. Fry the pickled cabbage. I was informed by a hand raised laterally above a head that I was tall. They tried to make us snap their bamboo bong. We took a photo with the one who took a liking to me.

Rice paddies gave way to lushly verdant national parks and forested slopes. Straight highways hemmed in by hills down which we went like idiots, touching 100km an hour, the point at which Aaron’s speedometer—mine doesn’t work—began to wobble.

One member of our lunch lady fan club

Between the two of us we have one working headlight, one horn, two and a half properly functioning wheels, four bags, four bits of rope, and three hundred and fifty kilometres of varying types of Vietnamese mud. Two breakdowns and one repair session at the hotel we found 18 kilometres out of Do Luong. We tried to ask for a mechanic and all the men waved it off, gathered around the bike, and began adjusting things. On the road makeshift repairs to Aaron’s chain took place variously with a stick and a group of kids. My bike has the throaty grumble of Tom Waits combined with an unsettling rattle. Aaron’s a more muscular ratatat punctured by backfiring enough to be the soundtrack to an episode of The Wire.

People wave if you make eye contact along the highway. At certain times large groups of school kids on wobbly single gear bikes emerge out on the highways. Right in the thick of one on a rutted and slick road, I was forced to a stop. And stalled. They stared and waved and talked as I stomped at my gears.

It kept raining. We passed three men, each with two pigs strapped to the back of their bikes, still alive. One was urinating. Huge trucks lumber slowly in first gear up the hills. The odd local on a powerful bike roars past. Cars and buses honk ceaselessly as they veer in and out of the single lanes to overtake.

In the quiet stretches it is magical. The connection on a motorbike to the world and the highway is intense. Bugs splatter, the rain whips, the air is heavy and fragrant and the kilometres unfold.